Spurs go down fighting against Atletico to finally hand Tudor his first win

The 50-day wait for a Tottenham Hotspur victory is over, Igor Tudor at last has that winning feeling and it is entirely in keeping with the current life of Spurs that it was all in vain for now.

They are out the Champions League and yet the hope will be that some of this more upbeat mood can last until Sunday when Nottingham Forest arrive for the big one at the bottom of the Premier League. Eight previous games without a win for Spurs going back to the visit to Eintracht Frankfurt at the end of January. The first Tudor win at the sixth time of asking, and a depleted home crowd that at least stayed with the team until the end.

It required a Xavi Simons’ penalty in the 90th minute to restore for a third time a lead that Spurs had twice lost. They showed again, as they did at Anfield, that there is a spark there but also some deep vulnerability. They hung in to the end even when rescuing the tie looked impossible, and that will offer some encouragement. Very few expected anything other than elimination at the last-16 stages but come Sunday against Forest, it will have to be a win.

Twice they took the lead, and twice they gave it up – both Atletico goals heavily featuring Julian Alvarez, the former Manchester City man who was the game’s outstanding player. Not a bad game for Simons either, who scored two of Spurs’ goals after Randal Kolo Muani’s first-half header. There was still one ill-advised tackle from Cristian Romero when he was already on a booking. Plenty of tricky moments on the counter – but everything was thrown at getting the win by the end.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]