• Premier League

Furious Sherwood: We're miles from the top four

Tottenham manager Tim Sherwood instructs his players to salute the fans after their 4-0 defeat © Getty Images

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A furious Tim Sherwood has written off any hopes of Tottenham challenging for a Champions League place following their "capitulation" against Chelsea, declaring his side are miles away from the top four in the Premier League.

Tottenham added a 4-0 thumping by Chelsea to previous humiliating defeats to Manchester City (6-0 and 5-1) and Liverpool, and Sherwood admits that spells out just how far away they are from challenging for the top four and a return to the Champions League.

"Everyone at the club talks about top four," said Sherwood, shaking his head, to Sky Sports. "Wake up.

"We're miles away. You can't finish top four if you can't beat the top teams. Ok, we've beaten Man United and we've beaten Everton who are in and around us but you're reliant on rolling over on, with all due respect, the smaller sides. We're not even close."

Although he acknowledged that the game "was over" when Younes Kaboul was sent off in the penalty incident that gave Chelsea a 2-0 lead, he refused to allow that to cloud his overall judgement of the performance.

"It's a lack of characters," he added. "Too many of them are too nice to each other, they need to show a bit more gut and not want to be someone's mate all the time. It can't always be me having a pop at them, they need to drag it out of each other.

"I'm not going to forget about this by the time we get on the motorway, some might. But on to the next [match], that's the nature of the game. There's a few I'd count on and there's a few I wouldn't.

"It's not a penalty and obviously then it's not a sending off, but the game's finished after that. There's the Europa League [against Benfica at White Hart Lane] on Thursday and we have to go out there and produce a performance.

"We owe it to the fans who were fantastic here today for us and we let them down again on the big occasion."

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