November kicked off with the top of the table taking on the bottom, as the Reds and the Lilywhites went head to head in one of the biggest games of the weekend. Over the summer, a favorite at the Lane, Robbie Keane, made a surprise move to Anfield. For Tottenham, Keane scored 107 goals in 253 appearances and to top it off, he won the Carling Cup. Before match-day, Keane reflected upon his time at White Hart Lane, “I am looking forward to going back. I was at the club for six years and had a fantastic time. There’s no doubt that they were six of my best footballing years, so it will be great to go back and see old faces and the fans.”
Dirk Kuyt, another of Rafa’s Reds, shared a few words before the match as well. “I’m sure they have more confidence now than they did a couple of weeks ago, but then we have a lot ourselves. We want to win as many as many games as we can and we will try to keep on going.”
Speaking of confidence, after Spurs showed character to hold Arsenal 4-4 in the mid-week, the Spurs dressing room has filled with confidence once again. David Bentley, first goal scorer against the Gunners, shared his thoughts on the upcoming match. “We now have to go out there and get a result against Liverpool. I know that, the lads know that, and we now have to get ourselves prepared for another massive game.” He added, “We want 3 points and we’re more than capable of doing that.”
Harry Redknapp, having only been manager at Spurs for a week, has let his coaching skills come through to this side, giving them their confidence back. He kept it simple before the game by saying, “Liverpool will be tough. For them to go to Chelsea last week and win was an unbelievable performance. It shows just how strong they are at the moment, but we’re playing well, we’re confident, and we’re looking forward to it.”
Going into the game, Liverpool’s record of being unbeaten so far was once again put on the line. Tottenham, on the other hand, were looking for another win to get them off the bottom of the table. With all of that said, the match was on. Just inside three minutes, Kuyt took the lead for Liverpool. It was a while for Spurs to have a shot on goal, but it finally came from Luka Modric from 22 yards out; Reina made an excellent save. Gerrard aimed for goal shortly after, but his effort took a deflection off King and Gomes barely got fingertips to it pushing it to the post. Again, another attempt came from Gerrard and this time bounced off the crossbar. Spurs’ first goal came from an own goal by Jamie Carragher, making the score an even1-1. Tottenham topped off the match with another from Pavlyuchenko in the last minutes, winning 2-1.
This win got Spurs off the bottom of the table, until Newcastle pulled a win on Monday. However, Liverpool lost their first match of the season and dropped to second behind Chelsea.
After the match, Harry was very pleased to see his side overcome the Liverpool challenge. “We were 1-0 down, but I said at half-time, ‘you can’t tell me we haven’t got enough ability in this dressing room to go out and score ourselves’, and I told them we were still in it. Liverpool had some good chances and in the second half we rode our luck a little, for sure. We kept going and in the end when you keep going, when you don’t give up, you get your rewards and that’s what happened.”
Rafa, however, did not feel the same way towards the outcome of the game. “I can’t believe we lost this game. I am really disappointed, but it was really bad luck because everybody could see we were the better team. It was a game we easily could have won 4-0.”
Jill Guthrie
