AVB dream lives on

Stoke City 1 Tottenham 2

Their admirable recovery in the penultimate game at Stoke, always a tough venue for visiting teams, allowed them leapfrog great rivals Arsenal for the first time in a month to regain fourth place.

Despite falling behind in the third minute to a near-post header from Steven N’Zonzi, Villas-Boas’s side showed their resilience by fighting back with strikes from Clint Dempsey and Emmanuel Adebayor, albeit aided by the dismissal early in the second half of Charlie Adam for two bookable offences against Jan Vertonghen.