Own goal and two penalties keep Spurs on course for Champions League progress

Tottenham Hotspur (1) 3 v Slavia Praha (0) 0

Zima (og) 26

Kudus (pen) 50

Xavi Simons (pen) 79

By Kaz Mochlinski at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium

Champions League

MD6

Tottenham Hotspur edged encouragingly closer to the Champions League knock-out stages, extending their excellent European run with another home victory as they battled to beat Slavia Praha 3-0.

However, it took an own goal and two penalties to maintain their 100% winning start in the competition this season in N17, having also kept clean sheets in all three matches so far, against Villarreal, København and now Slavia.

Spurs have impressively gone undefeated in their last 23 European games at home, but neither this nor their triumph in the Europa League final in May has really captured the imagination of the public, as large sections of the stands stayed unoccupied again.

In truth, a meeting between two teams placed 16th and 31st in the Champions League table was not the most appealing. Nor are Slavia full of familiar footballers, although few other clubs across the continent are as dominant domestically this season.

Czech champions this year for the 21st time, they are currently unbeaten in the national Liga after 18 matches, with 12 wins, including the last five in succession. However, in Europe they have found things far tougher.

Slavia had not been victorious in their previous 12 games in UEFA club competitions, and in the Champions League they have been doing even worse, as this was their 17th consecutive match without a win, stretching back to 2007.

Furthermore, on their visit to Tottenham, Slavia suffered a fifth outing in a row in Europe’s elite event in which they failed to score. It was not too much of a surprise that Spurs secured a fourth win in five encounters with the “Červenobílí”.

The home side actually should have gone ahead in the opening minute, from their first attack, as Wilson Odobert powered down the left wing and crossed for Richarlison, who hit his first-time shot too close to the Slavia goalkeeper to avoid it being saved.

With Xavi Simons taking the main creative role behind the Tottenham centre-forward, plus Odobert and Mohammed Kudus playing on either side of him with energy and guile, they caused plenty of problems for a man-for-man marking defence.

The bearded Jindřich Staněk in the Prague team’s goal was kept busy and seemed to be enjoying himself in frustrating Spurs’ attempts to get past him. It took one of his own players to eventually put the ball beyond his reach into the net.

Even more annoyingly from the visitors’ perspective the goal came from a simple set-piece, when Pedro Porro sent over an in-swinging corner right-footed from the left for Cristian Romero at the near post with a back-header.

There were actually no Tottenham players particularly close to David Zima and, facing in the wrong direction, the Slavia defender should have just let the ball go by, but instead, in a moment of panic, he headed it unstoppably goalwards.

It was the second time this season in a Champions League home game that Spurs had benefitted from an own goal to open the scoring, as they had been similarly given an early gift by Villarreal.

That meant Tottenham finishing the first half leading 1-0 for the third time in the three matches which they have hosted. And they received another unexpected pre-Christmas present from Prague straight after the interval.

Porro made a threatening run into the penalty area and put in a testing cross before being needlessly taken out late by the Slavia left wing-back, Youssoupha Sanyang, who was tracking him. A VAR check confirmed the inevitable award of a spot kick.

Richarlison and Simons both wanted to seize the opportunity to score, and momentarily a confrontation began to develop, requiring Romero, as the captain, to step in and ensure that the designated penalty-taker, Kudus, was unimpeded.

The former West Ham United favourite duly made no mistake in his dead ball execution for his first goal for Spurs in the Champions League. It effectively ended the encounter as a meaningful contest, with the home team very unlikely to lose after that.

Late on, Tottenham added a third goal through a second penalty of the evening given by the French referee, Benoît Bastien, when a Simons burst into the box was stopped by Igoh Ogbu, marking his debut in the Champions League with a clumsy foul tackle.

As Kudus and Richarlison had already been substituted, Simons himself got up to convert the penalty. Having scored for Spurs for the first time at the weekend, the Dutch international was delighted to make it two in a couple of consecutive games.

A bonus for the home fans was Ben Davies coming on from the bench for his first appearance of the season, significantly taking him to within two matches of Harry Kane’s club record of 76 European games for Tottenham.

The cheering of Davies’s entry was perhaps surpassed only by the pre-match greeting of Son Heung-min, returning as a guest for the first time since leaving to join Los Angeles FC at the end of last season, having captained Spurs to Europa League glory.

Tottenham have now not lost to Czech or Czechoslovakian opposition in eight meetings, going back to 1963, the year they became the first English club to win a European trophy with their victory in the Cup Winners’ Cup.

63 seasons later, Spurs are reasonably well placed to progress in the modern Champions League. But a tough test still awaits with a double German challenge in the New Year, against Borussia Dortmund and away at Eintracht Frankfurt.

Tottenham Hotspur: (4-2-3-1) Vicario - Porro (Davies 68), Romero, van de Ven, Spence - João Palhinha, Gray (Pape Sarr 58) - Kudus (Tel 58), Xavi Simons, Odobert (Bergvall 76) - Richarlison (Kolo Muani 68)

Slavia Praha: (3-1-4-2) Staněk - Holeš, Ogbu, Zima (Vlček 60) - Chaloupek (Zafeiris 60) - Douděra, Moses, Sadílek (Cham 76), Sanyang (Mbodji 80) - Chytil (Prekop 60), Provod

Attendance: 47,281