Dele Alli admitted Tottenham’s mentality “wasn’t strong enough” and refused to blame injuries for their Champions League exit after a 3-0 defeat to RB Leipzig.

Jose Mourinho’s side were soundly beaten at the Red Bull Arena after a first-half double from Marcel Sabitzer and a late strike from substitute Emil Forsberg sealed an impressive victory for the Bundesliga outfit.

Spurs, who were without several key first-team members, were forced to deploy Dele as a false nine but the 23-year-old – aside from a late effort – struggled to match the physicality of Leipzig’s backline.

The north London side were punished for their defensive mistakes too, with Hugo Lloris and Serge Aurier at fault for the first and second goals.

And Dele, giving an honest assessment of what went wrong, conceded the performance fell short of what was expected of them.

“It was the mentality. We were second for a lot of balls,” he told BT Sport. “You saw at the start we were bright, then we concede the goals and our mentality wasn’t strong enough.

“You can’t blame one person and I’m not going to single out anyone. It was the whole team, it’s not down to one player to stop goals.”

But Dele refused to accept the quartet’s absence as a viable excuse and apologised to the travelling supporters for their poor display.

“We can’t use that as an excuse, we still have enough quality on pitch,” he added.

“We are missing good players but that happens, and when it happens, we have to step up. We haven’t done that today.

“I’m gutted. I have to apologise for the fans for coming all this way and we lose like that. They deserve better.”