The board for four minutes of injury time had just gone up when that man, Christian Eriksen, sensed his moment had come. Frankly it didn’t look promising. Tottenham had laboured in the freezing rain and underwhelming ambience of a desperately bleak Saturday afternoon at Wembley.
They had sent the A-team on, Eriksen and Heung-Min Son coming off the bench. And though they had added zest, the best chances seemed to have passed.
Still, if the measure of a side’s character is its ability to hang on in and win games that look like slipping away, then Tottenham are made in the image of their coach, Mauricio Pochettino, once a long-haired, no-nonsense Argentinian defender.