Tottenham’s young hero returned to White Hart Lane following the brilliant long-range goal he scored on his first England start, having been fast-tracked into the national side despite making only a handful of Premier League appearances. A place in Roy Hodgson’s final 23-man squad in the summer suddenly seemed secure and the hopes of a nation forever in search of bright young talent weighed lightly on his shoulders.
It did not go as planned for Andros Townsend, who two years after his memorable goal against Montenegro returned to the Spurs squad for this game, having been temporarily ostracised following an argument with a fitness coach earlier this month. He spent the whole of it on the bench, as he has now five of Tottenham’s last eight in the league, having been brought in from the cold by Mauricio Pochettino in purely the figurative sense. From his ergonomic seat he watched as Dele Alli, scorer against France on his own full international debut last week, continued to relive his recent history while improving it in all key areas.
The similarities between Townsend and Alli became really uncanny in the 68th minute when Alli sprinted down the right in a vain effort to retrieve a loose ball, sped off the pitch and toppled over an advertising hoarding.
Towards the end of Townsend’s first match here after his breakthrough international goal he had done precisely the same thing, ending up unconscious and being administered oxygen by the physios. Alli was pushed up by fans and emerged with a grin, trotting off to continue wreaking havoc on all who attempted to contain him.
Not that West Ham truly did that. In the early skirmishes, as Alli took up a position just in front of the visiting defence and Cheikhou Kouyaté, West Ham’s tall, spindly Senegalese midfielder, set up camp in precisely the same area, it appeared that the Hammers had a plan to monitor the 19-year-old. But it swiftly became clear, as Alli’s frolics into space went emphatically unshadowed, that Kouyaté was not so much marking his man as occupying a frequently irrelevant patch of grass.
West Ham’s last two away performances – this having been preceded by an equally dismal 2-0 defeat at Watford – have done much to expunge any lingering glory from those early, bookmaker-defying victories over Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City. With defeat becoming an increasingly distant memory for Tottenham – in the league at least – Alli and Kane have been playing with a sense that anything is possible, and against opponents this accommodating it frequently is.
Pochettino’s forwards are rarely static, pressing in search of the ball and sprinting into space when they find it, but sometimes Alli, for all his movement, was most dangerous when he stood still.
Time and again he loitered on the edge of West Ham’s penalty area with his right boot cocked and waited to be found in space.
He was there in the 23rd minute, when his shot was blocked and rebounded back off him to Kane, who spun before blasting the ball past Adrián to open the scoring, and he was there again five minutes later, when Danny Rose’s pass was cut out, and three minutes into the second half when Victor Moses got in the way.
As the home side emerged from the tunnel before the restart Jan Vertonghen turned to those around him and shouted: “Big chance for us guys, come on!” Which given that they were already 2-0 up against a side apparently content to let them attack at will was an exhortation at least 45 minutes too late. With victory already within their grasp the only thing Spurs still had to fight for was the avoidance of humiliating collapse, which itself was guaranteed five minutes later when James Tomkins’ pass to Kouyaté – in the wrong place again – was intercepted by Christian Eriksen, who set up Kane’s second, blasted not so much past as through Adrián, momentarily blinded by the brightness of youth’s infinite possibilities.
As his accidental assist for the first goal suggests Alli also benefited from some good luck on occasion – it was hard to work out quite how the ball squirmed from him to Kane in the 39th minute, setting the striker free to sprint towards the penalty area before screwing a left-foot shot wide. But he was notably unfortunate when getting booked in the second half, apparently for straying too close to Mark Noble when the West Ham captain was in a foul temper, as a result of which he will receive a one-match suspension.
He was substituted a few minutes later, the crowd rising to cheer him from the field. Alli might have to watch his side’s game against Chelsea next weekend from the sidelines but, unlike with Townsend, it appears unlikely to become a regular occurrence.
