Tottenham boss Andre Villas-Boas salutes 'great European night'

Tottenham manager Andre Villas-Boas

Andre Villas-Boas believes Tottenham's comprehensive victory over Inter Milan was a "great European night" but has sounded a note of caution ahead of next week's second leg at the San Siro.

Gareth Bale, Gylfi Sigurdsson and Jan Vertonghen gave Spurs a 3-0 advantage to take to Italy next week.

Tottenham are now closing on a place in the Europa League quarter-finals.

"It was a very good performance and a great night of European football for us," Villas-Boas said.

"Unfortunately for us it doesn't mean that we're through yet as we still have to go there and it's a difficult place to go.

"We just hope we can do enough to qualify.

"It was a well-deserved result for Tottenham and is still prestigious."

Villas-Boas will be without Bale through suspension for next week's return match after the Welshman picked up a yellow card for diving.

The Tottenham manager admits Bale's absence will be felt, but is confident his team can reach the last eight without the winger, who took his tally to 21 goals for the season against Inter.

Villas-Boas added: "He's a great miss. With this result we probably would have asked him to get the yellow card [to serve a ban and wipe his card count] and be ready for the last eight.

"We're in a good position. Obviously it's not finished and we will miss Gareth because he's been influential in consecutive games, but we hope we can make it without him and go through to the last eight."

Inter coach Andrea Stramaccioni felt his team were out-muscled by Tottenham at White Hart Lane.

But he maintains there is still hope for next Thursday's second leg.

He said: "First of all we suffered from a physical point of view, they created us lots of problems with their aerial game.

"We want to win the second leg and, as we all know, football is a beautiful game and you never know what will happen but we are fully aware it is going to be very hard."