Gareth Bale. Frank Worrall
set up Crouch for the opener within the first five minutes with a fine cross to the far post and provided another for Defoe to make it 2-0 just after the half hour mark. Just after the hour Crouch headed home the third from a Bale corner, and in the 77th-minute the Welshman was brought down in the box by Lulic.
Crouch gratefully stepped up to claim his hat-trick and Tottenham’s fourth on the night. Afterwards the big man paid tribute to Gareth. Crouch had been voted Man of the Match for his hat-trick, but said: ‘It should have gone to Baley really, shouldn’t it? He set up all the goals and was our star performer. I’m always delighted when I see him out on that left wing…I know it means there’s a chance I’ll score, because of the quality of his crosses!’
Redknapp had now taken the club from the bottom of the league to the Champions League in 20 months – but he was determined they would not call success simply qualifying for the group stages. No, he wanted to get out of the group and into the knockout stages.
He said: ‘We’ll take on anybody now. We’re in the group stage and we’ll give anyone a good game here. We are a good side with good players and it will be a great experience for us. It’s fantastic. When I came here the dream was to get into the group stage and we’ve achieved that, so that is something to look forward to.’
Gareth and his team-mates were nervous but excited when the draw was made for the group stages, but were happy to draw holders Inter Milan as one of the three teams they would face (along with FC Twente and Werder Bremen). ‘It’ll be brilliant to get Inter down here at the Lane,’ Gareth said. ‘And to play against them in Milan is also something I’m really looking forward to. I have always wanted to play in games like this – now I am actually going to get the chance. I can’t wait.’
But there was much to think about before they played Inter. Like the Premier League clash with Wigan just three days after Gareth and the boys had seen off the Young Boys of Bern.
Inevitable really that it would be anti-climatic. After the highs of reaching the Champions League group stages, Spurs now struggled against a team they would normally expect to beat – and comfortably – at the Lane. But it was not to be…in a dismal, embarrassing showing, Spurs lost 1-0 to the Latics, their European hangover plain for all to see. The Sun’s Pat Sheehan summed up the worries that now faced Tottenham, writing: ‘Forget about Jekyll and Hyde. This season for Tottenham will be more like Jekyll and no place to hide. Brilliant when booking their Champions League place on Wednesday, distinctly average as they were beaten by the team who were bottom of the Premier League.
‘It was the best (or maybe worst) example of a wannabe top performer’s split personality. Competing with the best one minute, getting turned over in the worst possible way the next.’
Too true, and it was all the more unacceptable given that just under 12 months previously, Redknapp’s boys had crushed Wigan 9-1. Jermain Defoe’s five goals had eased Spurs on to their highest top-flight win – a win that was achieved without the injured Bale.
Hugo Rodallega’s winner at the Lane came after 80 minutes when stand-in keeper Carlo Cudicini failed to block his shot.
The defeat left Redknapp worried and he spoke unusually pessimistically after the match, saying: ‘We lack that bit of guile. I have felt it all along with us. We’ve got no real dribblers if Modric doesn’t play. Chelsea, Man United and Arsenal are stronger than us – that’s why they finish where they do every year. I came to the ground thinking it would be a difficult day.
‘But it’s easy after a good result to think you should rotate or you should do this. If you change the team today and go and get beat, and you leave Crouch out everyone goes “What did we change the team for?”
‘It’s no hardship to play a couple of games in a week, is it? It shouldn’t be a real problem for them. People turn up and they expect you to win, don’t they? We all expected to win today, but we knew it wouldn’t be that easy because they are going to come here and close you down.
‘Wigan gave us a warning when they missed two great chances and then we should have gone, “Okay, lads, make sure we don’t get done here”. But we were still open as a barn door, wanting to run forward and score, and we got done. The preparation was right, we’d heeded the advice about winning Premier League games after playing in the Champions League.
‘Today we just lacked ideas and the longer it goes it becomes harder and harder.’ I felt at the time he was a bit harsh – especially the bit about having no real dribblers if Modric was out. Bale would certainly go on to prove that assessment wrong as the season progressed.
A week later and Gareth was on the road to the Midlands in another match you might have expected Spurs to win. West Brom away, at the Hawthorns. But again, they would be thwarted, taking the lead through Modric on 27 minutes but ending up with just a point after Chris Brunt headed them level just before the interval.
‘Gareth and all the lads were quiet and looked lost in thought after the match,’ says a Spurs source ‘It was a muted, downbeat return to London. Two bad results in a week – just one point from a possible six and all of a sudden people are writing them off as no-hopers. But there was a feeling that maybe the point at West Brom wasn’t that bad.
‘Remember, they had suffered a Champions League hangover after seeing off Young Boys in the qualifier – now maybe they were suffering from pre-Champions League anxiety as they were off to Germany on the Monday after West Brom for the first group match against Werder Bremen.’
Spurs went with a 4-5-1 formation against Bremen, with Harry keen to pack the midfield once again. He knew that a defeat in their first group game was to be avoided at all costs: it could damage the team psychologically and could make qualification seem an uphill struggle.
Luka Modric didn’t make it after limping off at The Hawthorns with a leg injury but Harry still started with a powerful-looking five across the middle – Lennon, Huddlestone, Jenas, Van der Vaart and Bale.
Gareth was the man who answered Harry’s clarion call for his troops to step up to the plate as the big European adventure finally began. The Welshman is used to his team-mates converting his fine crosses, and was just as delighted when the hapless Petri Pasanen turned the ball into his own net from one of those crosses, on 13 minutes.
Five minutes later Peter Crouch made it 2-0 with an accurate header.
Everything seemed to be going Tottenham’s way: this Champions League looked a lark rather than a tough test. Then Bremen pulled a goal back minutes before the interval as Hugo Almeida headed home and a goal from Marko Marin a couple of minutes after half-time wrecked Gareth’s big night.
From a position of strength, Spurs had thrown away what could turn out to be two vital points when the group came to be decided in December. Gareth had given Clemens Fritz a torrid time down that left wing, but now returned home feeling a little disappointed. ‘We were brilliant in the first-half but let it slip and that is so frustrating,’ he confided to a friend on the plane home. ‘We need to be more clinical in finishing teams off.’
His boss was much of the same mind.
Redknapp said: ‘Yes, I’m frustrated, but I can’t be angry. That first half was as good as you could wish to see. Barcelona might be better but that was as good as Tottenham can do.
‘That first 42 minutes or so was the best you could ever see us play. We passed the ball and opened them up time and time again. But then we conceded a bad goal which suddenly brought them back into the game.
‘At 2-1 it gave them a massive lift and they got the early goal in the second half. But we had our chances with Gareth and Peter [Crouch] at the end but overall it was an excellent performance. We came here for an away game in a very difficult place to come and play.
‘They’re a good side, they had a few missing but we had four very important players missing.’
Both Gareth and Harry would need to overcome their frustrations – and quickly. Big Mick McCarthy and his Wolverhampton Wanderers