ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE: Fulham1 Tottenham 3:THE WORD from Sandbanks is that Harry Redknapp has been urged to spend the next four to five weeks recuperating from minor heart surgery, a prospective period of absence he is already threatening to dispute with his surgeons.
Yet, even when witnessed from his home overlooking Poole Harbour, occasions such as this can do little for the Tottenham Hotspur manager’s health.
Spurs eventually registered a seventh win in eight Premier League matches here to hoist them back level with Chelsea in fourth place, though the win was only claimed once their initial superiority had been eroded by Fulham’s second-half response. The visitors were clinging to their victory, straining to contain their hosts, with Brad Friedel, at times, standing between Fulham and a point. The victory, when confirmed, was as much a testament to Spurs’ newfound resilience as their trademark attacking flair.
The stand-in management staff of Kevin Bond and Joe Jordan will wonder how they escaped unscathed from the flurry of late opportunities.
Friedel pushed aside Moussa Dembele’s drive, then repeated the trick from Chris Baird’s ferocious attempt. When the goalkeeper was bypassed, Bryan Ruiz slipping Clint Dempsey through for the American to round his compatriot, Ledley King dived in to deflect the shot behind.
The rat-a-tat in the six-yard box two minutes into stoppage time at the end, during which Kyle Walker appeared to catch the loose ball while prone on the turf, defied belief only for Friedel and then Luka Modric, on the post, to deny Brede Hangeland and Dempsey again from the resultant corner.
Tottenham duly sprang to the opposite end where Emmanuel Adebayor centred and the substitute Jermain Defoe volleyed in a third via Stephen Kelly’s deflection. That felt cruel and unreflective of the play. The grin on Friedel’s face said it all.
Spurs had never been at their most fluent but, with their lead established early, they had been permitted to purr on the counterattack through the first period, confident in the knowledge their quality was always likely to prevail.
In the sprightly Aaron Lennon and Gareth Bale they boasted pace aplenty to rip Fulham apart, with Rafael van der Vaart and Modric a blur of clever passes. They could afford to be patient after the initial exchanges had yielded an advantage, albeit only after Friedel had clawed away a near-post header from Steve Sidwell.
Tottenham proved more ruthless. Adebayor dispossessed the former Reading midfielder and released Walker down the right, the full-back reaching the byline before conjuring a clever reverse pass for Lennon. The winger’s centre into the six-yard box flicked up off Mark Schwarzer but Bale, untracked beyond the far post, fizzed the loose ball across the goalmouth for Baird inadvertently to stab into his own net.
Fulham heaved to restore parity but appeared to lack bite, with the visitors prospering once again in stoppage time at the end of the first period. Lennon and Bale had swapped wings by then, the pair exchanging passes before Lennon tore at a backtracking Baird. The yard of space squeezed in the area proved enough, the finish low and crisp across Schwarzer and into the corner as Danny Murphy and Zdenek Grygera dived in.
The Czech defender did not see out the half, requiring oxygen as he departed on a stretcher after landing awkwardly and appearing to damage his right knee, though his team-mates did try to rally in his absence. The urgency was all Fulham’s, a succession of corners seeing Hangeland’s header tipped over before Spurs cracked. John Arne Riise’s delivery was ideal, the panic it induced seeing King nod against Younes Kaboul, with the ball ricocheting into the net.
That served as a cue for a period of mayhem in the Tottenham penalty area that failed to secure Fulham an equaliser, and eventually culminated in the visitors plundering an unlikely third. Martin Jol, a former Spurs manager, had reason to curse more than most.
- Guardian Service
