Jose Mourinho has forbidden his Tottenham players from watching back their humiliating 7-2 defeat to Bayern Munich ahead of their match in Germany tonight.
Spurs, then managed by Mauricio Pochettino, suffered what was one of the heaviest defeats in their 137-year history back in October, despite having taken a first-half lead through Heung-min Son.
Two months on, and Mourinho has replaced Pochettino as manager and have qualified for the knockout stages of the competition.
But ahead of the reverse fixture of that devastating loss, Mourinho was asked whether he and his players have analysed the match - and if so, have the players been left scared by it.
“No, I forbid any image of it,” answered Mourinho. “I watched it a couple of times: me, my staff and analysts try to go through every single aspect of that but not one single image for the boys. No. Not at all. We're going to focus more on us than on Bayern. “
“We're going to try to develop our model of play, with different bodies, different phases, different players. But there is a certain way that we try to play football and try to develop our principles of play.
“And we're totally focused on us tomorrow and less on Bayern. That's the way we're going to approach.”
With Harry Kane rested for the trip to Munich, Mourinho will rotate his team for tonight’s match in order to ‘focus’ on the Premier League’s hectic festive fixture schedule.
And with qualification already secured, Mourinho insisted this the ‘perfect situation’ to be in.
“When I arrived I focused on two matches, the first West Ham and the second Olympiacos,” said Mourinho. “The objective was to put everything in these two matches with one objective in relation to the Champions League: we have to qualify and of course if you can qualify in that game and not be here now thinking that tomorrow we need a result to qualify it would be the perfect situation because it would allow us to focus more in the Premier League. The first step is done. We qualified. We are in the knockouts.”
