Bolton W 1 Tottenham 1:THE CURSE of the penalty taker is still upon Tottenham Hotspur after Tom Huddlestone's failure from 12 yards against Bolton yesterday and Harry Redknapp must thank his lucky stars that Spurs are still in the competition.
He will undoubtedly pray the replay is not decided on a shoot-out.
“We have had a terrible season with penalties and they have counted against us,” Redknapp’s assistant, Joe Jordan, said afterwards. “Tom usually takes them with power in training but today he tried to place it.”
Tottenham’s miserable record means it is a revelation that they practise them at all.
Huddlestone’s spot-kick, saved by Jussi Jaaskelainen with 20 minutes remaining, was the fourth (out of six) that Spurs have missed this season. The midfielder was only given the job due to Jermain Defoe’s failure with six of 10 efforts. Throw last season’s shoot-out defeat by Manchester United in the League Cup final into the equation and it is a damning sequence. Here, they were indebted to Bolton’s inability to build on Kevin Davies’s opening goal. “We wouldn’t have had any complaints if Bolton had got a second,” said Jordan.
Defoe instigated a stirring second-half transformation with an equaliser just past the hour and despite surviving a late onslaught and the penalty, Owen Coyle, the Bolton manager, was aggrieved.
“I had a blast at the players at full-time for not finishing it off earlier,” he said. “Harry said to me afterwards it was a game of two halves but really it was an hour for us and the last 30 minutes for them.”
Spurs’ fortune lay in confronting a striker, Johan Elmander, whose finishing bears no relation to his price-tag. After being signed for a club-record €11.5 million from Toulouse in 2008 by Coyle’s predecessor, Gary Megson, he has provided a meagre return of nine goals in all competitions. His performance here suggested he has done well to get that many.
The Bolton centre-forward wasted several openings before Gareth Bale sent Spurs’ first effort over in the 13th minute. Vedran Corluka deflected Elmander’s first over the bar, when the Swede should have scored from six yards. He then found himself thwarted inside the area by Huddlestone, sliced over when Davies’s knockdown found him on the 18 yard line, and brought the stadium to its feet in anger after being sent racing clear by Ricardo Gardner. Elmander’s first touch took his run away from goal and his second went high and wide.
Mercifully for the Swede’s sanity, redemption of sorts was at hand when he created Davies’s sixth goal in seven appearances against Spurs on this ground. The breakthrough was evidence of Coyle’s increasing influence on this Bolton team, the move involving 17 passes before Elmander played a one-two with Lee Chung-yong and crossed for Davies to take advantage of slack marking by Corluka and score at the back post.
At that stage a home victory looked certain, but with Heurelho Gomes saving from Matt Taylor’s free-kick, Davies and Elmander going close and Fabrice Muamba missing a glorious chance, the failure to kill the game proved costly. Spurs realised they were in a competition they have an excellent chance of winning, David Bentley and Bale began to dominant the flanks, and the match was transformed.
Having struck the Bolton bar twice in 60 seconds, Tottenham equalised when Bale found Defoe inside the area and his powerful shot deflected past Jaaskelainen via Sam Ricketts.
The Bolton defender, conceded the penalty 10 minutes later when he handled Peter Crouch’s flick into the area.
But the outcome, as Redknapp must have envisaged, was all too familiar for Spurs. It is back to White Hart Lane, and the training ground.
