[ 2014-01-02 ]

Manchester United 1 - 2 Tottenham Hotspurs
Emmanuel Adebayor and Christian Eriksen gave new
Tottenham Hotspur head coach Tim Sherwood a third
win in four matches as they beat Manchester United
2-1.
Togo striker Adebayor opened the scoring for Spurs
in the 34th minute when he met an Eriksen cross,
becoming only the third player to score in three
consecutive games at Old Trafford.
Eriksen doubled their lead in the 66th minute with
a well-placed header after beating his marker, but
Danny Welbeck brought Man Utd back into the game
with his seventh goal of the campaign a minute
later.
That set up a tense finish, and the hosts pushed
hard for an equaliser and threw everything forward
in the closing stages.
But chances for substitute Javier Hernandez, Adnan
Januzaj and Welbeck were all missed as Man Utd
slipped to seventh in the Barclays Premier League
- 11 points behind leaders Arsenal.
Manager David Moyes made four changes in attacking
positions to the Man Utd line-up from their
victory over Norwich City, with Wayne Rooney and
Welbeck returning up front.
Kyle Walker and Danny Rose returned in the
full-back positions for the visitors, with Etienne
Capoue replacing the injured Paulinho in
midfield.
Welbeck and Chris Smalling both had early chances
for the hosts as Man Utd attacked down the right,
but Hugo Lloris made good saves to keep Spurs in
the game.
The visitors had a fantastic chance to open the
scoring in the 14th minute through Aaron Lennon,
but the winger wasted a perfect throughball from
Roberto Soldado as he fired straight at David De
Gea.
With their next attack, in the 34th minute,
Sherwood's side opened the scoring through
Adebayor with his third league goal of the
season.
Eriksen raced down the right before delivering a
perfect cross towards the back post, where
Adebayor rose unmarked to score.
They should have doubled their lead five minutes
later with another attack on the right.
This time, Lennon raced past Patrice Evra and
played a low cross into the unmarked Soldado, but
the Spaniard kneed the ball wide from six yards.
After a quiet start to the second half, the
visitors doubled their lead in the 66th minute as
Eriksen netted his second goal in three games.
The Dane anticipated the flight of a deflected
Lennon cross far better than Antonio Valencia,
stealing in front of the Man Utd man to head past
De Gea from five yards.
However, the home side halved the deficit
immediately through Welbeck.
Januzaj played a neat pass behind the Spurs
defence for the striker, and he latched onto the
ball and calmly lifted it over Lloris.
The goal woke Man Utd up and Januzaj had a
fantastic chance to level the game late on, but
his long-range effort curled just wide of Lloris'
right hand post.
That sparked a flurry of late chances to level,
the best of which fell to Rooney and Nemanja
Vidic, but they both found Lloris in excellent
form as he saved well.
Manchester United manager David Moyes: "The
performance was really good. I thought we defended
really well, got done by a couple of
counter-attacks today. The boys played well and we
couldn't take the opportunities when they came
along.
"All you can do is play well and hope you take the
opportunities when they come. Their effort was
terrific in trying to come back from 2-0 down. We
didn't deserve to be behind. We'll keep trying to
win the next game, that's all you can do. We're
not necessarily looking at the league table."
Tottenham Hotspur head coach Tim Sherwood: "I
thought we could have played better, moved the
ball a bit sharper because they were there for the
taking, but games are won on different qualities.
We showed the heart of a lion out there. We really
dug in.
"At the moment he [Emmanuel Adebayor] has ice on
every part of his body so we can't tell what's
wrong with him. He just runs all day long, he
tries hard for the team, but it's hard to single
anyone out. We've got nine players injured so
we're having to go with it with a very small squad
at the moment.
"We just try to win as many games as we can. We'll
try to dig out result and see what we can do. I
think we've got good enough players to achieve
something, we'll just see what that is."

Source - Barclays Premiere League

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