Football news: 'A gun fight without bullets' - Jose Mourinho hits Spurs panic button

The injury-hit side trail by a single goal ahead of the return leg in Germany, and Mourinho praised the effort of the players who did feature.

"Come on, let's be loyal to the boys and tell them they did everything they could do," he told BT Sport.

"Lamela [one of the substitutes] - you know how many training sessions with the team? Zero. Direct from injury to recovery with physios and then direct to 20 minutes in the Champions League.

"There are two perspectives - an amazing group and amazing guys but another side you see how we are at the moment.

"It's a situation like going to fight with a gun without bullets."

Mourinho struck a note of caution, questioning how his side can cope without Son Heung-min and Harry Kane.

"I'm not worried with the 1-0 - we can go there and win. What worries me is that these are our players for the next however many matches," he said.

"We are really in trouble. If it was just this game I'd say no problem but we have FA Cup and Premier League games.

"I know Lamela could only give us 20 minutes and I knew Ndombele could not play for 90 minutes. I tried to manage the pieces I had.

"Don't tell me Lamela and Ndombele could have started the game, they couldn't have started the game."

"Here we go: Chelsea, drinking sparkling water with lemon. Saturday morning - thank you very much for the choice," with Mourinho aiming a barb at the BT interviewer, as his channel requested the early fixture.

Tottenham keeper Hugo Lloris told BT Sport that he still had hope for the second leg: "I want to stay positive especially after what we saw in the last 20 minutes. There is a second leg and we have a chance. It's not the best result we could get."

He pointed to the end of the second half, where Spurs looked more dangerous, but admitted he was disappointed with the overall performance: "I think we were more proactive with the ball and managed to have more possession in the last 20 minutes. It's true we have to give credit to Leipzig who played very high. They have a lot of energy and run a lot. We had some situations we could have managed better.

"There is a lot of quality in Leipzig and they showed it today. Because of all the circumstances against us in the past few weeks and months we have to stay positive. Not to find excuses... we have to be ready to fight. We're not really happy with the result, but we did it last season - let's hope we try to create another story."