A number of the club's summer signings made their debuts, including Luka Modric and Giovani dos Santos, and Tottenham's assistant manager preferred to concentrate on their development rather than the overall performance of the team.

He said: "Taking away the positives, we can say that the new boys, especially Gio (dos Santos) and Luka (Modric), would have learnt a lot from that game.

stay calm

"They are quality players so I am sure they will get to grips with the English style of football very quickly."

He added: "We were not the best team in the world after beating Roma 5-0, and we are certainly not the worst now. It's just a football game that didn't go our way, so we need to stay calm and keep believing in ourselves.

"From now on, it's all about winning games. When we have a bad day, the key is to recover straight away, so Sunderland is a very important game."