EPL News: Redknapp builds his team up as title challengers after they defeat Arsenal (Part 1)
Harry Redknapp has come out and claimed that his Tottenham Hotspurs side can very well challenge for the title in the 2009-2010 season after they stormed back from two goals down against Arsenal to defeat the Gunners in the end with the
score line at 2-3 at the Emirates stadium. It was really a wonderful comeback by the Spurs who won their first match against Arsenal at the Gunners home stadium in over 17 years.
Arsenal took a two goal lead in the first half as they blitzed into action. The first of the goals came through Sami Nasri after he stormed through the Tottenham defence and then produced a deft finish to put his team in front. Tottenham
found it extremely hard to cope with Arsenal’s quick tempo as it was Chamakh who added another one into his teams lead after he made a spectacular run in front of Younus Kaboul and then touched the ball into Spurs net past Gomes.
In the second half of the match, Tottenham came out like a team possessed as at first it was Gareth Bale who was played in by Rafael Van Der Vaart. Bale’s left footed finish gave Tottenham a hope and then a few minutes later, Rafael Van
Der Vaart’s penalty kick brought them firmly back into the match. In the dying moments of the match, Younus Kaboul rose above the Arsenal defence to give his team the lead. It was truly a fantastic match in itself, which Spurs won in the end.
Harry Redknapp spoke after the match as he revealed, "It's wide open this league this year, it’s wide open. Chelsea are not as good as they were; Man United are not as good as they were three or four years ago. They're still excellent
teams but they're not the force they were. They were almost invincible, the pair of them. I think Tottenham are now getting closer and the championship is wide open. I said that to the players’ yesterday morning. 'Why can't you win the championship? Who says
you can't?'."
Harry went onto say, "It's wide open for somebody who can put a run together. It's there for someone to have real go at it this year. Why should we all be fearful and keep saying, 'We can't win it'?' I wouldn't be saying it if we had a
bad group of players. I'm a realist; I'm not dreaming. It's difficult to do but it's not impossible. This is the best chance anyone's going to get this year. There's very little to choose between the top five or six teams at the moment."
Tottenham started to dominate the game after Jermain Defoe came on for them during the half time break. But once again their comeback was inspired by Gareth Bale and Rafael Van Der Vaart, two players who a few weeks ago contributed in
Tottenham’s win over the European champions.
Harry added to his remarks as he stated, "It was either a case of getting beaten four or five or trying to get a goal back and seeing if we could make a game of it - and that's what we did," said the Spurs boss, who admitted giving his
players a half-time blast. We were open still but we needed a goal and luckily, we got it at the right time." Spurs lost their previous “top four” encounter against Manchester United by two goals to nil. However, Tottenham’s comeback victory against Arsenal
was their fourth comeback win of the season.
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