Ward-Prowse’s last-gasp penalty sees Southampton battle back to hurt Spurs

Despite Antonio Conte’s summer departure being widely accepted as an inevitability and annual questions over Harry Kane’s future sure to follow, Tottenham can still rescue this season. Even if finishing fourth last year has not resulted in much happiness this campaign, the financial rewards for club, playing and coaching staff are considerable.

Newcastle’s win at Nottingham Forest had further upped the ante but as so often with Spurs this season, at Southampton it was rather difficult to tell how much they wanted it. Goals from Kane and Ivan Perisic looked to have won them the game, only for Pape Sarr to thoughtlessly give away a penalty in the dying seconds, swinging a leg into a flying Kamaldeen Sulemana. Up stepped James Ward-Prowse to thrash home the spot-kick and suddenly Southampton were level; deservedly so.

Rubén Sellés’s tenure as interim manager has taken in wins against Chelsea and Leicester but it seemed defensive errors and sheer bad luck with injuries had extinguished hope this time. Now Carlos Alcaraz and Ward-Prowse are no longer the only Southampton players to have scored a Premier League goal for the club since the World Cup. Ché Adams and then Theo Walcott buried that statistical ghost and Saints’ chances of staying up remain alive.

Sellés continues to be tireless in his search for answers, forever rolling the dice. Following a flat home defeat by Brentford that kept Southampton bottom, an indicator of growing desperation was that none of the club’s five January signings were selected to start here. Such risk-taking values eventually paid off.

Conte meanwhile had stuck with the same team that beat Nottingham Forest, only to lose Richarlison in the opening moments. In turn, Armel Bella-Kotchap exited