Newcastle United boss Steve Bruce has revealed part of the debrief that was made after defeat at Brighton a fortnight ago.
Bruce says that coaching staff could not argue with the physical stats in terms of distance covered by his Newcastle players on the night.
He said: "Look, in football, you can play poorly but it's sometimes the manner of it.
"What I will enlighten you with is physically, they were our best physical stats of the whole season two weeks ago at Brighton, so it wasn't for the lack of effort or endeavour.
"We just didn't play well enough on the day.
"When you have a performance like that, the one thing you need is a response, and certainly, the players to a man have responded in the right way."
For Sunday's draw with Tottenham, Bruce reasoned: "It was important that we picked a team that had been together for the last two weeks – we didn't pick to many who had been away on international duty, so there was a certain freshness about us which I think we needed, and thankfully it worked."
