It may have been chaotic, but 10-man Tottenham Hotspur made a winning return to European football and Thursday nights could be a lot of fun if they carry on like this. Brennan Johnson, Pape Sarr and Dominic Solanke scored the goals that handed Spurs what looked like, on paper at least, an easy Europa League victory. But this was anything but a routine win, as Tottenham had Radu Dragusin sent-off before they went ahead and survived a number of huge scares – the biggest of which was a missed penalty from Qarabag, who almost didn’t even get to the Spurs stadium in time for the game to be played.
Qarabag were staying only 12 miles away from the Tottenham stadium in Stratford, but severe travel disruption meant they did not arrive for the game until 7.45pm. That was just 15 minutes before the scheduled 8pm kick-off, so the start of the game was delayed until 8.
35pm with a number of fans also suffering travel problems on the roads and public transport. Even that kick-off time was pushed back a few minutes after Qarabag captain Badavi Guseynov changed his socks in the tunnel as both teams waited to go out. Just as it seemed the night could not get any stranger, Tottenham were reduced to 10 men in just the seventh minute.
Dragusin was played into trouble by Micky van de Ven and then dragged back Juninho, as the Qarabag forward started to accelerate away from him. A nightmare start for Radu Drăgușin 😬 The Spurs defender is shown a red card inside the opening ten minutes �.
