Alli sent off for horror tackle
Spurs out of Europa League after going down to 10 men
The great Wembley European misadventure is over for Tottenham Hotspur for this season at least, and in its wake are more questions about Mauricio Pochettino’s team’s suitability to challenge for the big prizes and keep their nerve on the big nights.
This time it was a senseless red card for Dele Alli, and a failure to put away a team placed sixth in the Belgian league for whom this Europa League round-of-32 victory, 3-2 on aggregate, will rank among their greatest European nights.
As for Wembley itself, Spurs could yet be back for the semi-finals and the final of the FA Cup but their record here as a club is dismal, with just one win in the past seven visits including those two Champions League group-stage defeats this season.
It was a Europa League record attendance of 80,465, which at least suggests that the club’s dream of filling that new stadium rising on the Tottenham High Road is realistic. The question is what happens next season when they will make Wembley their home for 10 months.
This was the night to establish themselves in their temporary residence but they left themselves too much to do with 10 men and did not even win on the night.
Pochettino later did his best to defend Alli, as well you might expect of a manager who knows that he will have to rely on his 20-yearold Englishman when they face Stoke City in that crucial Premier League game at White Hart Lane on Sunday.
This is not the first flash of the Alli temper: he might have been dismissed against Fiorentina in the same competition 12 months earlier and his retrospective ban last season for striking Claudio Yacob hints at a problem that will need resolving.
There is plenty of time to do that but there is no doubt that Alli’s foul on Brecht Dejaegere was borne of another foul moments earlier on the Spurs man and the attendant frustration that came from it.
He launched at the Belgian with a tackle that caught his opponent below the knee and flexed his leg back in disturbing fashion – and Dejaegere later had to come off as a consequence.
It was also a bad night for Harry Kane, who scored an own goal in the first half and was lacking the sharpness we have come to expect of him, twice coming up short when the ball was drilled invitingly across the goal.
Ideally, Kane and his team-mates would have settled this tie early on and he could have been given a breather with Stoke in mind, but they were all there battling to the end even when Gent’s second equaliser of the night made a comeback impossible.
The Gent manager, Hein Vanhaezebrouck, conceded afterwards that on the night his side had been below par and had prevailed over the two legs as a consequence of their fine performance in Belgium and then a lot of heart in London.
He was right in that regard – and certainly for most of the second half it looked like Gent were the team down to 10 men, so thoroughly were they dominated.
Christian Eriksen had scored the first within 10 minutes and after Kane’s own goal, Victor Wanyama restored Spurs’ lead. But with the score at 2-1 and one more goal required, Spurs could not find a way through, and the changes Pochettino made from the bench demonstrated that his options are limited, despite the investment in the likes of Vincent Janssen and Moussa Sissoko.
Mousa Dembélé was superb once again, a force in midfield who is so difficult to tackle and equally brilliant at winning back possession, but once again he did not last the full 90 minutes. Heung-Min Son was the most effective of the second-half substitutes but eventually Spurs simply ran out of steam before the equaliser from substitute Jeremy Perbet.
To Gent’s credit they came with an open mind about the game and little more than nine minutes in they were one goal down on the night and level on aggregate and facing a very different scenario.
It was the mistake of Stefan Mitrovic which allowed Kyle Walker’s long ball down the wing to find its way through to Eriksen, who swept in his goal from the right channel.
It was Eriksen’s first goal in 12 games and a strong start from a Spurs team who had more Belgians in their starting line-up – three – than the visitors from Belgium, who had only two.
Then Kane’s own goal flicked in off the head of the striker after Mitrovic had headed a cross back across the Spurs area.
Alli’s red card came on 39 minutes after he took a heavy touch when the ball was played into him by Ben Davies. What followed was not the action of a man thinking clearly – he waded in after the ball with a wild, right-footed challenge on Dejaegere.
As Alli crossed the touchline Pochettino made no move to console his player.
Just after the hour, with Spurs well on top, Wanyama dispatched a shot beyond the Gent goalkeeper, Lovre Kalinic, after Walker had driven forward.
The decisive moment was Eriksen’s first time back-heel into the path of Wanyama, whom the Dane had seen advancing into a good shooting position.
With eight minutes left, the decisive blow came when Kalifa Coulibaly broke free in midfield and, going into the area, tried to cut the ball back.
Eric Dier allowed it to bounce limply off his chest and Perbet, the first-leg goalscorer, poked the ball in via a deflection off Dier. Spurs have conceded more goals at Wembley in four games this season than they have in 12 at White Hart Lane, which tells its own story.