Jose Mourinho on Tottenham's poor defending & Gareth Bale's absence in Everton loss

Tottenham Hotspur manager Jose Mourinho has admitted it was tough to watch his side's poor defending as they crashed out of the FA Cup at the hands of Everton on Wednesday.

Some electric attacking from both sides had the score tied at 4-4 at the end of 90 minutes, but in extra time, it was Bernard who popped up with the all-important goal to seal a 5-4 win and a spot in the quarter-finals for Everton.

Spurs managed to claw their way back from 3-1 and 4-3 down, but Mourinho confessed that he was disappointed that the team's defending undid all the positive work from the attackers.

"I enjoyed it, and I didn't enjoy it," he told BT Sport. "I enjoyed the way we played when we had the ball, from the first minute, immediately. We scored four goals and four goals was not enough.

"If it hurts me [the lack of defending], it hurts everyone from our team because the feeling is that we played really well, when we had the ball we were brave, we created. We were the best team winning 1-0, and certainly in five minutes, there was, boom, boom, boom, mistake, mistake, mistake, goal, goal, goal.

"We fight back, we fight back again and there were more mistakes as we fight back again and that was, that was the mouse and the cat. The mouse was our defensive mistakes, and the cat was us trying to compensate that very well and it's a lot of effort."

The boss also offered an update on winger Gareth Bale, who was left out of the squad altogether with what Mourinho described as a 'surprise' injury.

"We played against West Brom on Sunday, he didn't play," he said (via Sky Sports News). "On Monday I was a little bit surprised by him wanting to have a scan because he was not feeling comfortable with the muscular area, so he didn't train on the Monday,

"Then on the Tuesday he trained with the team, but I was informed that his desire was to work with the sport science to strengthen the area he was not feeling comfortable with, and that is the reason why he was not here.

"I don't think it is an obvious, clear injury. I would say that it feels uncomfortable, and because of that the training session couldn't be 100%, but I don't think we can speak about an injury."

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