Brittle Spurs ditch full Moyes caution to offer Conte renewed hope

D on’t mess with the formula. With 71 minutes gone at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the first 45 of them a haze of empty content and trapped energy, Harry Kane bumped Angelo Ogbonna away with his back to the West Ham goal, flexing his glutes, aware of the beeping, flashing light on his internal radar. Behind him Son Heung-min had already begun to sprint.

Son knew, even before that surge of static had begun to crackle around the stands. We have seen this picture before. The pass from Kane was instant, fizzed with a kind of celebratory excitement. Son flexed his hip to alter the angle and rolled the ball into the far corner of the West Ham goal to make it 2-0 and kill a game that had only briefly flickered into life.

It is a source of pride at Spurs that Son and Kane hold that record for most mutually assisting couple in Premier League history. It has been a wonderful partnership. But it also points to a certain static quality. You two? Still?

Other attacking players have drifted in and out, a mercurial winger here, a jinking creator there, ghosts in the machine. But for all the churn around them, the procession of fill-ins and pressed-men, this Spurs era has still found nothing even close to the synergy, the basic magic of Kane-Son.

Son did start on the bench here, consequence of his own recent poor form. And in fairness Spurs were already 1-0 up against a doggedly mediocre West Ham by the time he came on. But somehow it all still felt a little in the balance, if only because everything is in the balance right now, even by the standards of a club where, let’s face it, things are pretty much always in the balance. “We haven’t lost to West Ham in our last 10 meetings! Win today and we go fourth!”

You do have to hand it