GO on then, Gareth, a nice gentle re-introduction to the Premier League.
Three-nil up and cruising with 18 minutes remaining, go and have a run. Settle back in. Make yourself at home.
Manuel Lanzini completed a remarkable comeback with a 94th-minute pearlCredit: Reuters
West Ham looked dead and buried at 3-0 down with just eight minutes to playyCredit: Reuters
That was the perfectly understandable idea from Jose Mourinho after a Harry Kane-inspired Spurs had ripped West Ham to shreds to go three-up
early on.
What happened next was simply one of the most staggering collapses in Premier League history.
West Ham struck three times to seize a point, Manuel Lanzini hammering a spectacular 94th-minute equaliser after Bale had created and missed a glaring chance at 3-2.
You don’t get too much of this in LaLiga, Gareth, old son. Welcome back to the madhouse.
Bale’s second Spurs debut – after agreeing a season-long loan from Real Madrid – had been eagerly anticipated but nobody could ever have predicted it would produce such utter bedlam.
Nobody saw it coming, as Spurs had been in complete control, with David Moyes’ men seemingly content with damage limitation.
Yet Fabio Balbuena pulled one back, Davinson Sanchez added a spectacular own goal and, after Bale had toasted Angelo Ogbonna, only to screw his shot wide, the extraordinary final drama.
West Ham won a free-kick on the left, Aaron Cresswell centred, the outstanding Kane made a clearing header but Harry Winks made an error
on the edge of the box and substitute Lanzini let rip from 30 yards.
Son Heung-min had teamed up with Harry Kane to devastating effect for a first-half blitzCredit: News Group Newspapers Ltd
The England striker netted a brace – including a powerful back post headerCredit: Times Newspapers Ltd
Hugo Lloris could only tip the worldie onto the underside of the bar and down across the goal-line.
Moyes and his staff went ballistic. This is West Ham’s biggest derby and they had pulled off a draw which was more satisfying than most victories could ever be.
Spurs were second in the Premier League table when Bale came on. By the final whistle, they were seventh.
Bale cannot take too much blame for this choke.
The Welshman was rusty but he cannot carry the can for the sheer defensive panic which developed once West Ham scored their first
For so long, though, this had been about Kane’s all-round wonder show.
Sergio Reguilon got in on the act to set up Kane’s secondCredit: Times Newspapers Ltd
Gareth Bale entered the game with the points seemingly wonCredit: News Group Newspapers Ltd
Whatever the late carnage for his team, England’s captain is becoming a Jack of all trades and a master of all trades – one of the most complete footballers in the world game.
While we’d turned up to see one very versatile player in Bale, we ended up dropping jaws at the supreme all-round capabilities of Kane – who teed one up for Son Heung-Min, then added two himself.
Despite his prolific strike rate, Kane has always been more than an out-and-out goalscorer – yet now he is here, there and every-effing-where.
At various points, Kane made key contributions from centre-half, left-back and holding midfield positions – winning defensive headers, making mighty blocks, pinging passes from a midfield anchor role.
Under Mourinho, he is being deployed as the deepest of Tottenham’s front three – behind wide men Son and Steven Bergwijn, who will surely soon be replaced in the starting line-up by Bale.
Spurs were so often laboured and uninspired under Mourinho last season, even though results weren’t too bad.
Now there is no talk of ‘boring, boring Jose’ anymore – Spurs are thrilling in attack but still as Spursy as hell at the back.
Bale’s arrival on loan from Real Madrid lifted the club after their
opening-day loss to Everton yet he’d had to wait a month to gain match fitness and make his first Spurs appearance since May 2013 – when he netted an 89th-minute winner against Sunderland at the old White Hart Lane.
Bale missed a golden chance to make it 4-2 and seal the win on his return to SpursCredit: PA:Press Association
David Moyes led his side’s celebrations after a momentous comebackCredit: Reuters
The contrast between the two teams was as stark as it had been only 20 minutes earlierCredit: Getty Images – Getty
That season, Bale was both Footballer of the Year and PFA Player of the Year in a Spurs team which finished fifth.
Yet is the four-time Champions League-winner still anything like the player who left Spurs seven years ago? Not on the evidence of this – although it would be obscenely early to make judgments.
Moyes had returned to the dugout after missing two matches in Covid-19 isolation, during which his side scored seven times without conceding.
His team must have been wishing the Scotsman had stayed at home in his pants on the sofa after those first 16 minutes.
The first goal, after just 46 seconds, saw Kane way back in a deep midfield position, a long diagonal pass to release Son who kippered Balbuena and shot inside the far post.
It was the South Korean’s eighth goal in five games and perhaps even more remarkably it was Kane’s ninth assist of the season.
After Cresswell had bent a free-kick into the side-netting, Spurs doubled their lead,
This time it was Son doing the assisting for Kane, who collected a pass from his partner-in-crime, nutmegged his England team-mate Declan Rice, and fired home low.
Next, Sergio Reguilon’s cross picked out Kane at the back-post for the England captain to score with the sort of towering header Dominic Calvert-Lewin has been trying to trademark of late.
If there were any doubt that the white-hot Everton centre-forward might be a genuine rival for the England No 9 role, here was Kane’s response.
He has five goals and seven assists in the first five Premier League matches – which, the stats men tell us, is unprecedented.
West Ham should have reduced the deficit early in the second half when Michail Antonio’s deflected shot found Pablo Fornals, two yards out, yet the Spaniard somehow headed over.
There were no real signs of a fight-back before Bale replaced Steven Bergwijn.
Spurs had won a free-kick 30 yards out, which the prodigal son immediately took – yet it was a scuffed effort, comfortably gathered by Fabianski.
Then all hell broke loose. After Kane had been denied a hat-trick by the post, Balbuena headed home a Cresswell free-kick.
And suddenly there was blind panic in the Spurs ranks as Vladimir Coufal and Sanchez sent a diving header into his own net.
Bale produced a moment of inspiration in injury-time, when he left Angelo Ogbonna on his backside only to screw his shot wide.
When the Hammers won that 94th-minute free-kick you could sense every Spurs fan fearing the worst.
And Lanzini made sure that they were right.
What a finish from the West Ham sub, what a climax to this derby and what an abolsute sickener for Bale.
Jose Mourinho wants to make leader Harry Kane ‘explode’ at Tottenham in All or Nothing doc
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
