Brennan Johnson has rued Tottenham players' decision to adopt a 'safety-first' strategy at the weekend.

Despite taking an early lead, Spurs failed to showcase their best football and were outplayed for large spells against Wolverhampton Wanderers. Both goals may have come in stoppage time but it is hard to argue against the hosts being worthy winners as an injury-stricken Tottenham held on for large chunks of the second half.

That marks a stark difference from last week when, despite losing 4-1, Spurs held firm to their footballing philosophy with nine men - a trait that did not go unnoticed by Ange Postecoglou.

"It is just who we are, mate,” the manager said after the Chelsea defeat when asked why Tottenham failed to shut up shop. “It is who we are and who we will be for as long as I am here. If we go down to five men we will have a go.”

However, those beliefs went out of the window at Molineux as Spurs backed off and capitulated in the dying embers. Summer recruit Johnson put Tottenham in front - scoring his first Premier League goal for the club - after three minutes but grew frustrated by the change in mentality.

“We started so well, moving the ball quickly, and we scored so quickly,” he told the club’s media channel. “After that, we went into the headspace of getting three points, and that’s not the right mentality because there was so much time to go in the game.

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“If we continued playing how we did at the start we’d go on and keep pushing, but we almost went too safe, including myself. We all went into safety mode thinking 'If we see it out, we get the three points', but we scored after five minutes, so we can’t play like that.

“We’ll look back at it, try to be more aggressive in our pressing, positioning and playing forward. That’s the most disappointing thing, we could have killed the game off.”