Premier League

WOLVES 2 (Sarabia 90+1, Lemina 90+7)
TOTTENHAM 1 (Johnson 3)

THE wheels came off the Ange Postecoglou bandwagon today (Saturday) as Tottenham slipped to a heartbreaking late, late defeat at Wolves.

Postecoglou’s makeshift defence – missing three out of four of his usual starters – had defended a 1-0 lead from the third minute until injury-time, before succumbing to a classic sucker punch double that makes it two defeats in two Premier League games.

The shock loss at the hands of Chelsea earlier this week was more than just three dropped points – with injuries to James Maddison and Micky van de Ven and suspensions to Destiny Udogie and Cristian Romero thrown in. Postecoglou had to start his Spurs project almost from scratch.

The afternoon started brightly enough. Brennan Johnson had fired Tottenham into the lead within minutes, finishing a flowing attack from close range. Perhaps, the travelling contingent must have thought, Spurs would not miss playmaker Maddison – out until January – too much.

Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg came in to bolster the midfield and add a layer of protection to the Eric Dier and Ben Davies centre-back pairing. The four enforced changes saw Dier and Hojbjerg make their first starts this season. Alongside them, Davies and Emerson Royal had only started one game previously.

It was a point Postecoglou flagged up afterwards.“Some of the guys have played their first games of the year – changing three of the back four is fairly disruptive, especially when the guys haven’t played at all,” said the manager.

Postecoglou could not find much to fault with the incoming players but there was an understandable rustiness about the play compared to recent weeks. He added: “They will be better for the experience. They will be stronger now they have a match under their belts, so there are plenty of positives.”

Postecoglou faces a crash course in integrating the likes of Bryan Gil and Giovani Lo Celso, both who got minutes here, if Spurs are going to stay in touch with the top four over Christmas and beyond. The Australian continued: “We started well but we could have been a little bit more positive, a little bit more aggressive, particularly with the ball.

“I have got to temper that with the fact we’ve made so many changes and we’re not going to get the same sort of fluency when three of your back four are virtually starting for the first time. We made changes further up [the pitch] as well so it’s not going to be as fluid, but we could have been more positive.”

After Johnson got Spurs off to a flier, they often looked dangerous through individual moments: the powerful running of Dejan Kulusevski, Johnson’s give-and-go moves and Hojbjerg trying to thread the ball forward. But the visitors lacked cohesion and retreated deeper and deeper when Wolves had shaken their groggy start off.

Yet Tottenham so nearly got back to the summit of the Premier League, defending their lead past the 90-minute mark and into stoppage-time. Wolves had corner after corner but it was all hit and hope stuff, heavy on the effort and light on the finesse.

Yet when the Wolves equaliser came, it did so in real style – and gave the home fans such pleasure as to spur the players on to seek an unlikely winner.

Substitute Pablo Sarabia, on the pitch for less than four minutes, got hold of a looping forward ball from Matheus Cunha. He took it in his stride, transferred the ball from his right foot to left in one movement, and thumped a volleyed finish past Guglielmo Vicario.

Sarabia would then play another significant role five minutes later, playing the ball in for Mario Lemina to tuck home the winner.

Next up for Spurs is a tough home tussle with Aston Villa, and then the road trip to the Etihad to face Manchester City.

A week ago, Tottenham looked good to take six-points from the past two games. Now, with these tough matches up next, Postecoglou will be feeling anxious: his side cannot afford to drop many more points if they are genuinely looking to get into the Champions League next season.

Wolves: Sa, Kilman, Dawson, Gomes, Semedo (Doherty, 67), Bellegarde (Kalajdzic, 73), Lemina, Gomes (Sarabia, 87), Ait Nouri (Doyle, 87), Hwang, Cunha
Substitutes not used: Traore, Silva, Bueno, Castro, Bentley

Tottenham: Vicario, Porro, Dier, Davies, Royal, Hojbjerg, Bissouma (Lo Celso, 76), Sarr (Bentancur, 63), Kulusevski, Johnson (Gil, 76), Son
Substitutes not used: Skip, Forster, Phillips, Veliz, Donley, Dorrington