Jose Mourinho says he "believes in" Tanguy Ndombele after the midfielder spared Tottenham's blushes with a precious winner in the Europa League.
Ndombele came off the bench to score five minutes from time as Spurs progressed to the Europa League third qualifying round after surviving a scare against Lokomotiv Plovdiv in Bulgaria.
The hosts took a 70th-minute lead against the run of play through Georgi Minchev but imploded seven minutes later when Lima Almeida and Bircent Karagaren were sent off in the space of a minute.
The Portuguese was shown a straight red for handling Ben Davies' goal-bound effort on the line before Karagaren was shown a second yellow card for tampering with the penalty spot. Harry Kane thumped home an equaliser from 12 yards and Ndombele's tap in booked Spurs a trip to Macedonia to face Shkendija next week.
Ndombele, who came on for the final half an hour, was repeatedly criticised by Mourinho last season and has been linked with a move away from Spurs this summer.
But the Spurs manager said afterwards: "Tanguy is in a process of evolution. Last season he wasn't. Last season he stuck in a situation where I couldn't see evolution. In this moment he's training very, very well.
"He's recovering from his injury, he's recovering physically and today he gave us what we needed in this last 30 minutes. In this moment, I believe in Tanguy. I never doubted his quality. Never. I doubted in some moments his motivation and commitment and professional attitude. In this moment I believe in him. Today we made this decision together to not start the game because he also feels that he needs a bit more but in this moment I think that Tanguy can do well for us."
Mourinho added: "We had the ball every time and it was just a question of scoring before them, which we didn't. We could in the first half. We hit the bar, had the penalty not given, we had good chances.
"They scored before us and then game is in the limits. Of course my bench is much stronger than their bench. When I made the changes I had players on the bench with the qualities to come on and try to help us change the game."
