Here are our Tottenham talking points after their 2-1 victory against Liverpool in the Premier League on Saturday evening
It wouldn’t be Tottenham Hotspur if it wasn’t a match packed with incident and last-gasp drama.
Those days of mundane, dull football which had the Spurs supporters snoozing in the stands seem a lifetime ago.
Make no mistake – unlike the VAR room – Ange Postecoglou’s side rode their luck and then some but they came away with their first victory against Liverpool in six years and ended the visitors’ unbeaten run in all competitions which stretched back to April 1.
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This was actually one of Spurs’ least impressive performances of the Premier League season so far against a resolute Liverpool side that contained just nine players in the end and 10 for much of the game, but history will show a result that means far more and represents another building block in the Australian’s transformation of the club.
Those red cards meant Spurs had 65% of the possession and made 602 passes to Liverpool’s 281 and 24 shots on goal to the visitors’ 12, forcing Alisson into stunning saves from James Maddison and Son Heung-min
Ultimately though, while Spurs will look to improve on what they struggled with, they will not care one bit about how the game played out when it had another blockbuster ending for the 62,001 supporters in attendance.
Tottenham have now beaten Manchester United and Liverpool at home this season and drawn away at Arsenal under Postecoglou. So far they have found a way in every test presented to them in the Premier League.
Once again on Saturday they dug deep and pushed open the door and while on this occasion VAR was on their side, they will know that against Liverpool in particular it has rarely been in the past. Sissoko’s armpit and Skipp’s head are testament to that.
On this occasion, VAR well and truly went to sleep. Perhaps they were watching clips of Spurs last season in the room at Stockley Park.
They failed to react to the fact that Cristian Romero was playing Luis Diaz well onside nine minutes after Curtis Jones was sent off and the official’s flag was raised in error after the Liverpool man had fired a clinical shot inside the left-hand post.
It took an hour for the apology to come from the PGMOL and even then it had its own error within it. See if you can spot it without using a pitch-side monitor.
“PGMOL acknowledge a significant human error occurred during the first half of Tottenham Hotspur v Liverpool,” read their statement.
“The goal by Luiz Diaz was disallowed for offside by the on-field team of match officials. This was a clear and obvious factual error and should have resulted in the goal being awarded through VAR intervention, however, the VAR failed to intervene.
“PGMOL will conduct a full review into the circumstances which led to the error.”
Jurgen Klopp was suitably disgruntled with everything officials-related after the game.
“I knew it [was onside] at half-time. With normal pictures it was easy to see. Whoever made the decision [to say it is offside] didn’t do it on purpose, it didn’t take extremely long to come to the conclusion which was strange but somebody else has to clarify that. I have nothing else to say about it,” he said before saying more about it.
“How can the referee explain the situation? The linesman thought it was worth watching again and that’s why he raised the flag. In the good old times the linesman should have seen that wasn’t offside as well as you have these situations frequently. “Nobody did it on purpose – whatever I say here it creates headlines but doesn’t help the situation at all. I’m not in that mood.”
When he was told about the PGMOL’s statement, he added: “Does that help now? We had that situation in the Man United game [on the opening weekend], did Wolves get points for it? No. We will not get points for it. It doesn’t help.
