It was Adebayor’s red that cost Spurs on Saturday (Video)

It’s a given that a North London derby is always a hot headed affair. Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur are two teams just four miles apart and with two sets of fans that have the highest expectations of their respective teams.

Saturday was no exception. Both teams headed into the encounter on a poor run of form, Spurs more so, but neither side was confident. Despite missing influential midfielder Mousa Dembele in the middle of the park, it was the visitors that started the brighter.

Former Arsenal front-man Emmanuel Adebayor put Spurs 1-0 up and it could’ve easily been doubled when Aaron Lennon fired just inches wide of Wojciech Szczesny’s far post. However, after 17 minutes, the game was turned on its head.

The away side were dominant up until the point where Adebayor completely lost his head around the halfway line and dangerously lunged in on Arsenal’s Santi Cazorla. Unsurprisingly, a red was brandished.

Afterwards, the Gunners gained a firm stranglehold on the encounter and continued to dominate from that point on. Spurs head coach Andre Villas-Boas, to his credit, moved to three at the back at half-time to attack the hosts, but in the end the one man advantage proved too much for the Lilywhites.

Had Adebayor not been sent off, it could’ve been a different game entirely. Spurs could well have nabbed a second and held on until the interval. Nevertheless, for the second successive time Arsenal put five past their neighbours and it can be argued that it came about from the Togolese front-man’s rash challenge after only 17 minutes. 

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Comments

[Michael Staley]

Yes, of course it can be argued that Spurs might have won the game had the red card not happened. However, having watched the first half on video the other day, it was clear that both teams had spells of good play up to the point the dismissal occurred. In any case, it is by no means unusual for early dominance to fade as matches wear on, or for the dynamic of matches to shift this way and that as they develop. We saw a 2-0 Spurs lead overturned 5-2 in the corresponding fixture last season, and there was no dismissal on that occasion. All in all, we can conjecture as much as we like, but there are no grounds whatever for assuming that Spurs would have gone on to win the match had the dismissal not happened.

The assertion by Villas-Boas that Spurs controlled the match from start to finish is one of the most bizarre assertions I've heard. If you are in control of a match which you lose 5-2, then clearly you were manipulating the other team into scoring goals.

[seagoon]

The point is, is the loss of a forward worth a 3 goal defecit? Personally i can't see it even though obviously losing a player weakens the team.

[hannu]

Unbelievable bullshit this story. What happened, that happened. If only Paul Gascoigne hadn´t scored, we´d won that FA cup semifinal some 20 years ago. But he scored, and so did Tony Adams a year later or so. And now Ade scored and was rightly sent off, and we won. Stop that nonsense.