Today I'm going back just four years to 2018 and Tottenham's FA Cup 5th Round Replay against Rochdale, played at Wembley Stadium due to ongoing construction works at Tottenham's new stadium in front of a midweek crowd of 24,627.
Today's programme cover star is, as stated, Danny Rose. Rose burst onto the scene at Tottenham with an absolute screamer and goal of the season contender in the 2010 North London Derby at White Hart Lane, a goal guaranteed to endear him in the hearts of all Spurs supporters. In fact Rose's career started at Tottenham's feeder club Leeds United although he never made an appearance for them and was sold to Spurs for around £1 Million in 2007 when Leeds were in severe financial difficulties. Rose was destined to remain at Tottenham until 2021 when he moved to Watford on a free transfer. In all he made 214 appearances for Spurs in his 13 seasons at the club, scoring 10 goals as well as winning 29 caps for England. Rose is perhaps most noted for his openness regarding his own struggles with depression and mental health whilst at Tottenham.
The featured game was a Replay with Tottenham having had quite a scare up at Spotland before escaping with a 2-2 draw. They proved to much more ruthless in the Replay and were ahead in the early minutes at a snowy Wembley with a simple goal scored by Eric Lamela. I remember the game as being marred by VAR (Video Assistant Referee) which was being trialed in the FA Cup that season. At times, fans in the stadium had little idea what was going on during lengthy delays for reviews by the officials sitting in Stockley Park and invariably they seemed to come to the wrong decision anyway. Lamela's effort was eventually very harshly disallowed but not without quite a delay and there were further such delays to come including a penalty shout for Lucas Moura that went unrewarded. Heung-min Son finally scored Tottenham's first valid goal in the 23rd minute and then had a penalty harshly crossed off due to his feint in the run up that earned him a yellow card. International Football Association Board rules apparently stated that an indirect free-kick will be awarded to the defending team if a penalty taker feints to kick the ball after completing their run-up, although the rule added that "feinting in the run-up is permitted". Confused yet? Rochdale made a game of it by equalising via Stephen Humphreys in the 31st minute and it remained 1-1 at half time thanks to several erroneous VAR decisions.
The second half would prove to be a different story altogether and was marked by a hattrick from Fernando Llorente who scored in the 47th, 53rd and 59th minutes to effectively finish the tie in increasingly blizzard-like conditions nicknamed "The Beast from the East". Llorente had appeared in only one Premier League game that season before this match and his goals reminded us what a valuable squad player he was. He would go on to illustrate that several times more as the season progressed. Son then scored his second and Tottenham's fifth in the 65th minute before Kyle Walker-Peters finished off the scoring with Tottenham's sixth and final goal in added time. 6-1 and it would have been more but for VAR. It was to be Walker-Peters' first and last goal for the club
Spurs went on to beat Swansea City in South Wales in the Quarter-Finals (or sixth Round if you prefer) before succumbing 2-1 to Manchester United in the Wembley Semi-Final. Chelsea won the FA Cup that season beating United 1-0 in the Final.
CRB Match No. 2209
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