Crouch blasts silly mistakes

Crouch: Blasts mistakes

Peter Crouch thinks Spurs need to cut out silly mistakes if they are to progress in the UEFA Champions League.

Spurs found themselves four goals and a man down by half time in Wednesday's trip to European champions Inter Milan at Giuseppe Meazza.

Harry Redknapp's side showed great character to fight back and nearly claim a share of the spoils courtesy of Gareth Bale's hat-trick, but they still slipped to a 4-3 defeat.

Crouch has bemoaned their start to the contest, an opening period that saw them three goals down inside quarter of an hour, and he knows that you cannot present good teams with golden starts.

"It was a ridiculous start, we had a mountain to climb and we can't do that against top teams," explained Crouch.

Fightback

"We can't give them goals, that's what we did but credit to us, we came back at them in the second half.

"We've got to cut that out but if we do cut that out we've got enough about us, we've got some top quality players, I think we kept the ball well in the second half.

"If we cut out the silly goals we'd have had a chance but we got punished for the start we had. It was very difficult having 10 men but we showed good character."

Crouch was full of praise for hat-trick man Bale, who has been nothing short of sensational for Spurs for the past two years since he made the left-wing berth his own.

"He's been magnificent for two years, obviously at the top level here at the San Siro to score a hat-trick for him is magnificent," he continued.