Every word Ange Postecoglou said on why he took off Romero and Van de Ven plus Udogie's absence

Ange Postecoglou spoke to reporters after Tottenham's 2-1 at home to Nottingham Forest on Monday night in the Premier League and we've got the full transcript with everything the Spurs boss said.

The visitors scored just five minutes into the game when Pedro Porro headed a Forest corner across the Spurs box and it fell for Elliot Anderson to hit a powerful shot that deflected off Rodrigo Bentancur and Guglielmo Vicario could not stop it from crossing the line. Chris Wood then had an effort ruled out by VAR for offside but did get on the scoresheet on 17 minutes when he took advantage of slack marking to head in Anthony Elanga's cross ahead of the flapping Vicario.

Spurs produced shot after shot as the game wore on with Forest goalkeeper Matz Sels making a series of saves but it wasn't until the 87th minute when Richarlison finally took one of his chances with a header from Porro's cross, his fourth goal in his past five Premier League appearances.

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In all, the home managed 22 shots to Forest's four, while the visitors only had four touches in the Spurs box, but the north London side could not find another goal.

Our Spurs correspondent Alasdair Gold was among those putting the questions to Postecoglou after the game. Here's the full transcript from the Australian's press conference at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

You had 22 shots to Forest's four, how do you explain that scoreline?

It’s another game we have lost where we shouldn’t lose and it’s been a big part of our season in that we are just making things really difficult for ourselves in key moments, just a little bit of concentration. Giving away poor goals. It’s a shame because our football was outstanding and we totally dominated the game. Even with the two goals we conceded I still feel like we deserved to win the game. At the same time it’s another loss and another unacceptable loss. For us it’s just been a season where at times, even with the challenges we have had and we have had challenges today having to make changes to the team, but it’s really frustrating because our football was so good. We have lost another game.

That's 18 defeats in the Premier League now, what can you say to the fans?

I don’t need to say anything to the fans. The fans are disappointed and angry as we are as well. It’s too many losses I know that. I don’t need to tell the fans anything. The fans clearly wouldn’t be happy with our results but neither am I or the players. From our perspective, it’s something we need to accept responsibility that we have fallen short of the standards we need to have. The flip side of that is that the frustrating bit is it’s not because of the way we are playing because our football today was very similar to the Frankfurt game at home which was another game we should have won.

Taking off Romero and van de Ven at half-time, was it pre-planned?

Yeah, that was pre-planned.

Another goal for Richarlison was a positive at least?

It was part of the exercise today to get him and Wilson, Kulusevski, Kevin Danso some game time because they have missed a hell of a lot of football. Richy has hardly played all year, Deki has been a couple of months, same with Wilson and Kevin. From that perspective it was good they all got through it and got some meaningful minutes. We could rest a few others which was also useful for us. From that perspective it was a positive.

Do you think trying to avoid the club's worst ever points total can be the motivation for the players in the Premier League or is it all about the Europa League?

I don't know what that means. I don't think you saw a team that wasn't motivated. It's not like we lost because players chucked it in. If that's what people saw then they're watching something different to me. I don't think they lacked motivation today because I thought our football was outstanding.

But again we've paid the price for lacking focus and concentration in key moments and it's another game we've let slip. So I don't think motivation is an issue.

Does it come from a lack of leadership or experience?

It shouldn't be because it's happened to us a few times this year. We should have learned from these things but it's a constant in our make-up at the moment and it's something we need to eradicate. At different times this year we've shown really good focus and concentration, Frankfurt being a classic case of that.

But tonight, just at the start we didn't really sense the only threat that Forest were going to have was the counter-attack, which we handled really well in the second half, and set pieces. We let in two poor goals.

That's two weekends with mistakes from Vicario, do you have any concerns about his confidence?

No, no. No I don't, he's fine.

How is Destiny Udogie, we could see him with the team, and James Maddison, after Thursday?

Yeah, they're ok. Destiny was fine. We just left him out of the squad tonight. He put in a big physical shift on Thursday and the idea was always to rest him. I wasn't going to put him on so there was no point in putting him on the bench. Madders was pretty sore yesterday but in the last 24 hours he recovered and was keen to be on the bench. They're both fine.

What was the thinking with Romero and Van de Ven?

I thought they needed to play some minutes tonight because it becomes 10 days leading into Liverpool. With both of them we've got them in a really good place physically now and I just want to keep them ticking over. I felt that there was no need to play more than 45 minutes today and we needed to get a couple of others game time. I just felt that if it was Sunday we probably wouldn't have played them, but on a Monday, especially for Micky because he's been playing just one game a week, we need to build him up because he's in a really good place at the moment so I thought 45 minutes for both of them would be beneficial.