Wigan Athletic 0 Tottenham Hotspur 3:WHEN HARRY Redknapp last took Tottenham to Wigan Athletic, he spent the hours after a 1-0 defeat wondering aloud whether his team had the mental spirit to avoid relegation to the Championship. Thirteen months later and times have changed, the Spurs manager was asked if his team had the mental spirit to make the Champions League.
If they have to rely on goal difference to take fourth place, then Wigan will have played a significant part in the journey. This match never threatened to match the 9-1 rout of Roberto Martinez’ side at White Hart Lane that prompted the Wigan manager to sit through endless video replays of the debacle and his captain, Mario Melchiot, to propose a refund for the travelling supporters. However, three goals was an ample return given the effort Wigan expended and the amount of possession they had.
A run-through of the chances each side created would reveal that while Heurelho Gomes had one serious shot to save, tipping over a drive from Hugo Rodallega, Chris Kirkland denied Jermain Defoe and Peter Crouch in one-on-ones and saw a shot from Luka Modric strike the post and rebound into his arms. And that was quite apart from the goals.
Redknapp joked that the fact that the first was blatantly offside would lead to a sleepless night when he returned home to Dorset. “It doesn’t bother me at all,” he remarked. “I have seen the replay and, yes, it is offside. Sometimes you get them and sometimes you don’t. That is the way football goes.”
Defoe’s sixth goal of the season against Wigan and his 22nd in all was the result of the kind of dreadful technical decision that a sport like cricket has managed, through use of technology, to almost entirely eradicate. When Gareth Bale passed across the face of the Wigan area, the striker was perhaps a yard offside and, judging from his embarrassed reaction on scoring, Defoe knew it.
“It left a bad taste and it remained throughout the whole game,” Martinez said. “Given the dreadful condition of the pitch, the first goal was paramount. Football is a game of errors but to have a player at least a yard offside when the linesman has nobody blocking his vision is very hard to accept.”
Given that just before his goal, Defoe had launched into a wild, uncontrolled tackle on Gary Caldwell, Martinez wondered whether he should still have been on the rutted pitch that will be relaid after Wigan’s rugby league fixture with Catalan Dragons on Friday.
“I thought he and Tom Huddlestone did enough to be sent off,” said the Wigan manager.
Perhaps it was just as well that Roman Pavlyuchenko, who hitherto had played 63 minutes of league football this season, ensured the result did not swing entirely on an offside decision.
Guardian Service
