Spurs run over as Coleman fires Everton

IF Robbie Keane is on his way out of Tottenham, he would love to have remembered his last game in a fonder light than this.

Reports before the game suggested that Keane is off to Birmingham City for a fee believed to be around £7m.

If he was after a valedictory wave-off from his time at Spurs — where he is sure to be remembered as a favourite — then it could not have gone much worse than it did last night as Seamus Coleman signed off another performance oozing with dynamite with a fine winning goal to end Spurs recent impressive run.

Yes, Louis Saha’s hamstrings may be as fragile as the finest china and his goalscoring record abysmal so far this season but, even still, that was no reason for Tottenham’s defence to give him the copious room they did as he hovered around the penalty box after just three minutes. William Gallas thought about challenging then decided against it and that gave Saha the allowance to fire past Heurelho Gomes from 25-yards to finally open his Premier League account for this season.

Saha was a truly potent and dangerous weapon during his time at Fulham and, injury permitting, Manchester United, so the fact he had to wait until this Premier League term was six months old to grab his first this season underlines perfectly Everton’s travails in front of goal this season.

They have not been too much better at the back either and Spurs made the most of that as they equalised just eight minutes later.

Alan Hutton’s deep cross was aimed at Peter Crouch — who else? — and he held Phil Neville off long enough to steer the ball into Rafael Van der Vaart’s path and he beat Sylvain Distin to volley past Tim Howard.

It was his 11th goal of the season and provided further evidence that Harry Redknapp pulled off the signing of the year when he coerced the Dutchman from Real Madrid in August.

It was the Dutchman’s 11th goal of the season meaning that himself and Gareth Bale had scored the same amount of goals as the entire Everton squad had done this year. David Moyes even played 4-4-2 in this match, in a break from his usual 4-5-1 tradition, in order to rustle up goals from somewhere.

Their prolificacy was underlined by a dreadful miss from Jermaine Beckford as he fired over dreadfully when well placed as Everton marginally became the more attacking outfit although they failed to use their possession wisely enough in a half that steadily got worse.

Van der Vaart tried one acrobatic volley as half-time approached but it went safely over Howard’s crossbar and Peter Crouch then had a goal ruled out for offside after Saha’s suicidal pass to Gareth Bale allowed the Welshmen to play Crouch through on goal. The game restarted in a brighter fashion than the first-half had ended as Seamus Coleman missed one glorious chance as he blasted straight at Gomes rather than pass to an unmarked Pienaar in the middle.

It got niggly and the standard continued to hardly inspire although Howard did well to stop a Van der Vaart effort immediately before Spurs had Hutton to thank for keeping it level as he brilliantly diverted a Saha volley behind for a corner.

At the other end, Howard was superb in denying Van der Vaart from point-blank range in a rare Tottenham attack before Coleman then headed in a rebound after a Saha shot was too hot for Gomes to handle.

Keane did make a brief foray but produced nothing. Thanks for the memories Robbie.

Just not the ones from last night.

EVERTON: Howard, Neville, Distin, Heitinga, Baines, Coleman, Arteta, Fellaini, Pienaar (Osman 86), Saha (Rodwell 88), Beckford (Yakubu 77). Subs

TOTTENHAM: Gomes, Hutton, Dawson, Gallas, Assou-Ekotto, Lennon (Keane 80), Modric, Jenas, Bale (Kranjcar 58), Van der Vaart, Crouch.

Ref: Lee Probert (Wiltshire).