Lanzini's late gem completes stunning West Ham fightback at Tottenham
David Hytner at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium
Date Published Sun 18 Oct 2020 18.38 BST

When Gareth Bale finally made his entrance, one month after re-signing for Tottenham and 72 minutes into this derby, it is fair to say that the scene was set. Spurs had a free-kick 30 yards out, to the right of centre, and the returning hero went straight over to take it.

For a few tantalising moments those present and the watching TV millions wondered whether his scriptwriter had the most outlandish plotline in mind. It would have been too much. The first touch of Bale’s comeback was a shot that bounced tamely into Lukasz Fabianski’s arms.

The footballing gods had something else in store, something dark and troubling for Bale and Spurs but wild and glorious for West Ham.

Spurs were 3-0 up at the time, having run their opponents ragged in the early going, Son Heung-min scoring one and the irrepressible Harry Kane two. On 79 minutes, Kane would take a pass from Son and hit the outside of a post. Had he completed the hat-trick, it would have been a deserved reward for an outstanding individual display.

West Ham were not finished. Far from it. And to say it was not Bale’s day is one of the understatements of the season. At 3-2, he had tiptoed through only to pull his shot wide and it left the door open for another substitute, West Ham’s Manuel Lanzini, to produce a last-gasp equaliser of such quality that it almost beggared belief.

West Ham had been much the better team in the second half, pushing Spurs back, and their lifeline came when Fabián Balbuena headed home from an Aaron Cresswell free-kick. Their second followed shortly afterwards, on 85 minutes, when Dávinson Sánchez diverted a Vladimir Coufal cross into his own net and, with Spurs having lost their cool, Lanzini scored a goal to send West Ham’s fans tearing around their living rooms and David Moyes leaping up and down on the pitch. The West Ham manager later called his celebrations a “David Pleat moment”.

Cresswell bent in a free-kick from the left, which was half-cleared and then prodded out by another substitute, Harry Winks, but only as far as Lanzini. Cutting across the ball first time with his right boot, he sent it screaming into the far top corner via a little brush with Hugo Lloris’s fingertips. The full-time whistle sounded almost immediately, leaving Bale to wander off as if in a daze. Welcome back to the madhouse.

It had felt as if the occasion was all about Bale – seven years after he had last played for Spurs – and Mourinho surely thought it was an easy moment to get him on as a substitute, to tick the box on his second coming without too much fuss.

Instead, he watched in horror as his players came apart psychologically.

Before the international break, they had won 6-1 at Manchester United, showing the heights they can hit. This was a grievous low, although nothing ought to be taken away from West Ham. After the wins over Wolves and Leicester, this was the latest illustration that Moyes is building something of substance.

Bale had taken a socially distanced seat in the Spurs dugout at kick-off and he could enjoy a lightning start from his team. Mourinho got his tactics spot-on at the outset and the game was shaped after 16 minutes as Spurs hared into a 3-0 lead.

With Steven Bergwijn high on the right and Son likewise on the left in a 4-3-3 system, Kane was given the licence to drop from centre-forward into the pocket, rather like an NFL quarterback in the sport that he so loves to follow. Tanguy Ndombele, meanwhile, pressed up from centre midfield and Spurs were able to revel in the spaces between West Ham’s lines.

Kane created the opening goal with a lovely ball over the top for Son, leaving the South Korean to jink inside Balbuena and bend a curling shot into the far corner. Everybody inside the stadium seemed to know what Son was going to do apart from Balbuena, who was not tight enough.

The second came when Kane nutmegged Declan Rice on the edge of the area before burying a low shot past Fabianski and West Ham looked scrambled when the third went in. Sergio Reguilón’s whipped cross was a beauty and Kane did the rest.

Cresswell had curled a 30-yard free-kick just wide at 1-0 while Michail Antonio had a sniff moments before Kane’s first goal, but West Ham had to do more. When Kane threw himself into a block on Coufal just before half-time, it summed up the Spurs player’s all-action contribution. What was he even doing back there?

West Ham did more after the interval and it was possible to wonder whether Spurs had thought the game was already won. Moyes wanted just one goal to see whether his team could unnerve their rivals and Pablo Fornals almost got it, heading over from point-blank range – a glaring miss.

Tomas Soucek saw a header blocked while Reguilón got away with a barge on Jarrod Bowen as the West Ham winger ran through. Enter Bale, hoping for it to play out as he had dreamed it the previous night. The reality was jarring.