Palace's home woes continue as Spurs star Kane picks Vieira's men apart in 4-0 trashing

By Alessandro Schiavone at Selhurst Park

Crystal Palace 0-4 Tottenham Hotspur

A Harry Kane brace inside five minutes and Matt Doherty’s first goal of the campaign were enough for Tottenham to claim bragging rights against London rivals Crystal Palace in a 4-0 win at Selhurst Park for Antonio Conte’s men.

South Korea star Son Heung-Min rounded off the result by scoring only his fourth goal of the season after being on the end of a good team move, albeit Marc Guehi played a big part in that with some diabolic defending.

But it wasn’t straightforward and Tottenham were made to work really hard for their three points after Patrick Vieira’s Palace failed to translate their dominance into goals.

Conte’s fifth-place side lacked imagination on the ball in the opening stages of the game to break down a diligent Palace side.

Yet despite being outplayed in the first 45 minutes, they hung in and kept a clean sheet. And that’s a great news in itself these days, considering that they had trailed in each of their last 10 Premier League outings. Hugo Lloris also got his redemption after gifting Aston Villa the opener on Sunday when he magnificently saved Jordan Ayew’s strike on the turn from a few yards.

Then Joachim let fly from around 20 yards but his arrowing effort flew inches wide with the Frenchman all but beaten. Spurs survived a few heart-in-mouth moments, struggling with Palace’s change of pace and quick diagonal switches. Yet all that led to nothing as the visitors stuck four unanswered goals in the space 24 minutes.

And after costing his nation a place in the semis of the FIFA World Cup following a skied penalty against France, a reinvigorated Kane was back among the goals, opening his account for 2023 with Premier League goals number 14 and 15.

He nodded home an inviting cross by Ivan Perisic before he let his killer instinct loose a second time on Guaita minutes later.

Tottenham were now in the ascendancy and kept making life difficult for Palace. In the 68th minute Son Heung-Min's pass was deflected into Doherty’s path as the Irishman confidently slotted home the 2008 League Cup Winner’s third. And after fluffing his lines seconds before the ex-Wolves man made it 3-0 the ex-Bayer Leverkusen star got another bite at the cherry and ended a run of eight goalless games after latching on to a loose ball.

Late on in the game, Lloris denied Palace a consolation goal with two excellent saves as Vieira is still waiting for his first league home win since late October.

Crystal Palace

13 Vincente Guaita- 2 Joel Ward- 6 Marc Guehi-7 Michael Olise-9 Jordan Ayew-10 Eberechi Eze-11 Wilfried Zaha-15 Jeffrey Schlupp-16 Joachim Andersen-17 Nathaniel Clyne- 28 Cheick Doucoure

Tottenham Hotspur

1 Hugo Lloris- 2 Matt Doherty- 4 Oliver Skipp- 5 Pierre Emile Hojbjerg- 7 Son Heung-Min- 10 Harry Kane- 11 Bryan Gil-14 Ivan Perisic- 15 Eric Dier- 17 Cristian Romero-34 Clement Llenglet