TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR STADIUM — Son Heung-min to Harry Kane, the familiar architecture of many a Tottenham goal. Come on you Spurs. This was the moment, 56 minutes into a match Spurs had been losing from the sixth minute.
Kane bearing down on goal, his stride adjusting to bring the full force of his left boot to the ball. Kane is not thinking at this point but reacting instinctively according to prompts that have come to him a million times.
The crowd – restless, frustrated, angry at another disjointed display – recognise a turning point is upon them. They urge on Kane, the noise deafening as he races clear of the Wolves defence.
And then despair. The net does not bulge as it has so many times in the past. The ball instead rebounds off the keeper’s legs and a third successive league defeat beckons.
Kane in his late Tottenham period appears gripped by inertia, another lost season leaving him stuck in third gear. The half a yard he needs to make a difference is denied him not by a lack of effort or desire – he still tries hard enough – but by the absence of purpose that pervades the club.
Kane is 29. He would like to think his best is still before him. If he stays here it is almost certainly behind him. And so through the motions he goes as if waiting for the future to come to him, whatever that might be.
This was another fine afternoon for the old gold of Wolverhampton, the victory taking them above Spurs to sixth.
Spurs had enough of the ball and created chances but even when Sa in the Wolves goal dropped it they were all fingers and thumbs as much as he was.
Wolves are not a team to which you want to be giving a head start. They might easily have been four up in the first quarter of the game but settled for two. The polite request not to use the “Y word” was impolitely refused by a Spurs crowd unwilling to relinquish ownership of the term and defiant in the face of the cancel culture attack. They did not have much else to shout about.
Trailing to a Raul Jimenez volley they were not about to be bossed around on the terraces as well as the pitch. With 18 minutes gone Wolves had a second, Leander Dendoncker presented with a straightforward opportunity by Spurs’ pin-ball defending.
Jimenez had Hugo Lloris at full stretch again as Wolves found the way to goal too easily sign-posted. It was a remarkable opening not least because of the trouble Wolves have had finding the net. The Premier League’s lowest scorers outside the drop zone, Wolves arrived at the Tottenham Stadium with only 19 goals in 22 league games.
They owe their top-four ambitions to a defence with fewer cracks than a freshly plastered wall. Only Manchester City have conceded fewer. It took 27 minutes for Antonio Conte to crack, subjecting hooked Ryan Sessegnon to a long walk of shame from the far side of the pitch.
Wolves are that splendid thing, a brilliantly-coached group unburdened by expectation or fear. Much like Southampton, who won here in midweek and had Manchester United on a string for the greater part of Saturday’s lunchtime encounter, Wolves do not overcomplicate.
Each player knows where to stand and when to move. Every action begets a reaction from a team-mate creating an impressive sense of fluidity, a golden organism seemingly connected by invisible rods.
Had Kane taken his opportunity the match might have tilted towards Spurs and that top-four dream might once again have taken shape. Or perhaps not. As Conte remarked, results like this reflect the reality.
After 22 games Spurs sit eighth, a middling team doing unremarkable things, a situation that begs the question why Conte accepted the post? A nice stadium, yes. A fine city, sure. A club trending upwards, hardly.
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“There are a lot of jobs to do but it is not simple because the environment is used to play for Champions League, Europa League, but everyone maybe has to realise something has changed and you have to try to work to build again and we have to know this.”
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