Tottenham must show 'killer instinct' and stop giving opponents 'life': Mourinho

Jose Mourinho has urged his players to find their killer instinct and stop giving their opponents ‘life’ in matches.

Mourinho’s plea comes after another game, Spurs’s Europa League last 32 tie against Wolfsberger, in which individual errors from his side offered hope to the team they are facing.

And it is especially relevant ahead of Sunday’s trip to West Ham. Spurs collapsed from 3-0 up in the 81st minute and ended up drawing 3-3 in the dramatic first fixture between the pair in October.

Mourinho also cited Spurs’s FA Cup exit at Everton as another example of familiar frailty which has undermined them, when their 1-0 lead quickly turned into a 3-1 deficit and eventual 5-4 extra-time defeat.

He said: ‘Football is a game of emotions and when an opponent is, I’m sorry to use the word, almost dead and then you give them life, emotions change.

‘And the opponent becomes a different team than it was.

‘You can teach how to play the transition when you are winning and the opponent is trying to recover and the ambition to go for a bigger result.

‘What you cannot teach is to put the ball in the net. That is a fundamental part of the killer instinct and you can work the tactical combinations, the counter-attack combinations that keep the pressure high but in the end, you have to kill.’

Mourinho feels Spurs’s incredible draw with West Ham earlier in the campaign summed up their season and highlighted the issues he is trying to solve.

He said: ‘We played really, really well in that match but we didn’t win it and this is a little bit a reflection of many of our matches and some of our problems.

‘The team played so well but made mistakes and because we made mistakes we drew.’