MICHAEL Dawson insists that Spurs cannot use their Champions League exploits as an excuse for Saturday s defeat against Wigan, pointing out that Tottenham passed a much harder test two weeks ago. Spurs clash with the Latics on Saturday was their fifth g

MICHAEL Dawson insists that Spurs cannot use their Champions League exploits as an excuse for Saturday's defeat against Wigan, pointing out that

Tottenham passed a much harder test two weeks ago.

Spurs' clash with the Latics on Saturday was their fifth game in 14 days following Premier League meetings with Manchester City and Stoke, and two make-or-break Champions League play-off ties against Young Boys.

However Dawson, who has been called up to the England squad for the upcoming Euro 2012 qualifiers, refuses to accept physical or mental fatigue as a mitigating factor.

And the 26-year-old has highlighted the victory at Stoke's hostile Britannia Stadium just four days after the trip to Switzerland as evidence that Tottenham can handle their new workload .

"It's massively disappointing. Losing a football match is never nice and, after the high from last Wednesday night, it's back down to earth," said Dawson.

"We can't blame this result on the Champions League. We've got to get used to it - this is what we want to be doing, it's as

simple as that.

"We went to Switzerland and then came back and got a great result at Stoke, so you can't look at that too much. We're going to have to get used to it but we need better results."

Spurs' shock defeat against Wigan was their first competitive loss at White Hart Lane in 2010, ending a 17-match unbeaten run in N17 which stretched back to December 2009.

Notably, Tottenham's previous upset had come against Wolves, and Dawson is adamant that lessons must be learned to avoid further repeats against supposedly inferior teams this season.

"This happened a few times last year. Stoke came and did the same, so did Wolves and Hull. But we had a lot more chances last year, we didn't create too many this time," he said.

"You want to win at home and get the three points. You could see the fans were cheering us on to do that, but maybe we left ourselves a bit open at the back. We wanted to go for the win but it backfired.

"There's lots of time to put it right. There's lots of games but you never like dropping points so early on in the season.

"Wigan deserve a lot of credit. They had a good game plan, got everybody behind the ball and we just couldn't break them down.

"We tried to get the ball into midfield, we were getting closed down and then went a bit longer and it wasn't happening.

"The lads worked their socks off and it just didn't work for us. It was the same against Wolves and Stoke last year. Wigan saw what we did to them last year and weren't going to let it happen again, so credit to them.

"We'll sit down as a team when we get back in and see where we can improve. I'm sure a few teams will come

here to the Lane and do the same against us.