Tottenham vs Wolves: Spurs title challenge killed before it started by stunning second-half comeback
Tottenham Hotspur 1-3 Wolves: Three second-half goals cancelled out Harry Kane's sublime opener to give the Premier League new boys a famous win
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Right when you thought they were in, they’re pulled back out. Tottenham Hotspur’s title challenge was killed almost as soon as it began, but not quite as quickly as it took Wolves to turn this game at Wembley around and turn Mauricio Pochettino’s team right over. Three goals between the 73rd and 87th minute gave Wolves a brilliant and deserved 3-1 win at Wembley, to leave Spurs feeling so much more deflated than they would from a normal defeat.
This is going to be difficult for them to take, just as it’s very difficult not to use that phrase.
Yes, Spursy. They got a mere sniff of a title race, and fainted.
After a week when all of their strengths had been so talked up, and they’d both talked and played their way into a title race, we so soon had this occasion that laid bare every single one of their weaknesses: the lack of depth, the lack of options, the lack of durability… the lack of ability to even stay on their feet when that one big stride is finally demanded. They couldn't even get the draw that has eluded them this season.
All of the goals and all of the compliments of the last few days were so quickly forgotten, as was all the praise for Harry Kane’s MBE and his brilliant opening goal.
That actually made it all the worse.
For the entirety of one half, and just as we get into the half of the season that really matters, Spurs had looked so in control. They had looked like the team that could really challenge for once.
They soon looked like a shambles, especially as Helder Costa shredded them on the break for that fatal 87th-minute goal.
It is of course possible that this is just an inevitable dip in the Christmas schedule, that no one can sustain it with so many games in so many days, and especially not when you face a side like Wolves who have taken so many points off the big sides. It may even be a long-term positive in that it encourages Daniel Levy to properly spend in January to bolster this squad in the way it needs.
But it’s simply impossible not to wonder how Spurs had ceded a position of such control; how they had so badly faded, and then so badly folded.
There were long passages of the first half when the game seemed a procession, its fairly slow pace only broken by the thunderbolts powered at Rui Patricio’s goal. One of them was Kane’s, that flew past the goalkeeper on 18 minutes, and that one seemed enough.
It’s just that there were warnings.
Even throughout those last few games, and even around that Kane goal, there was a looseness to Spurs. They were giving up opportunities, which perhaps should have been predictable with the absence of all of their most protective players in Jan Vertonghen, Mousa Dembele, Eric Dier and Victor Wanyama.
This is one area Pochettino is going to have to look at in January, but he is still going to have to confront how easily the current players collapsed here.
It was as if Wolves sensed the fragility to Spurs at half-time, and then so brutally - and creditably - just went for it.
The sense of siege had been building. The Spurs defence was crumbling. On 74 minutes, Joao Moutinho put a corner on Willy Boly’s head, and the defender put it into the net. There was barely a challenge to speak of. So it was with Raul Jimenez’s winner. He was granted so much space around the Spurs box on 84 minutes, that he was able to guide in the most cushioned of curling efforts.
Spurs attempted to grandstand finish, but - perhaps fittingly - even that was killed before it began. On 87 minutes, with Pochettino’s team just starting to throw men forward, Wolves just killed them. Costa surged through on the break, and through for the clincher.
It was so incisive, just cutting through Spurs, and cutting away their legs.
There is of course the argument that this may not be terminal, that it may be just a blip, that it might bring the response - in the market and the team - that is really required to challenge.
For the moment, though, people will only point to something that already seems inherent in this Spurs team.
When it mattered most, those goals dried up, and so did any sense of hope.
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