Tottenham vs West Ham result: Distracted Spurs pay the price for turning their attention to Champions League

Tottenham Hotspur treated this derby like a dress rehearsal, and they paid the price. With not just one but two eyes on Tuesday’s Champions League semi-final with Ajax they walked through this game, and straight into disaster.

West Ham United were good value for this 1-0 win, holding Spurs off in the first half and then picking them off on the break in the second. Michail Antonio scored the game’s only goal but it was far from their only chance in a second half in which Spurs looked tired and distracted.

It was only in the final minutes, with Vincent Janssen on as a substitute, that Spurs started to threaten an equaliser and by then it was too late. Now Spurs have missed an opportunity to tie up a top four finish. And whatever happens against Ajax, their last two league games suddenly have much more riding on them than they would have wanted.

The problem is that Spurs’ distraction was obvious from the start. For them, this was the practice run for the biggest night of their lives. Of course finishing fourth is important, and Spurs have their own rivalry with West Ham United to defend. But on Tuesday night they host a Champions League semi-final here, a game so blindingly important that it is almost impossible to see anything else.

This game, usually so intense, had to live in that low-wattage gloom. Jan Vertonghen was rested, Kieran Trippier left on the bench, as Spurs made sure that they could throw everything they had at Ajax on Tuesday. With injuries to key players too, it was an unusual-looking Spurs team: a midfield diamond with Danny Rose one of the shuttlers. Not something that Pochettino does when everyone is fit.

But with Christian Eriksen and Dele Alli in the team there is always a threat. Especially up against a West Ham side who did not just want to defend deep and wait. And Spurs should have scored twice early on, Son Heung-min running onto Dele’s pass, Dele running onto Eriksen’s, but neither man could convert.

After that fast start Spurs could not find the incision to go with their control of the ball., as if they were not quite willing to throw everything they had at West Ham. Lucas whistled one wide from 20 yards but West Ham’s occasional breaks looked just as likely to bring a goal. When Felipe Anderson’s long-range shot deflected off Toby Alderweireld it could have gone anywhere, but ended up in the arms of Hugo Lloris.

Clearly Spurs needed more in the second half, more intensity and more application. But they did not get it. Apart from one moment when Son went down in a collision with Arthur Masuaku, and the fans called for a penalty, there was not much of a threat. And when Antonio raced downfield on the break, only to have his shot blocked, it should have been a warning to the Spurs defence.

But they did not heed it, and it cost them. Because Antonio soon burst through and slammed West Ham into the lead. Declan Rice charged forward through midfield with the ball and played it out wide to Marko Arnautovic on the right. He clipped in a cross, spotting the near-post run of Antonio long before Davinson Sanchez did. Antonio is sometimes criticised for his technique but there was nothing wrong with it here: controlling the ball on his chest, letting it bounce, smacking it past Lloris.

That was the 1-0 lead and it did not feel especially surprising. Spurs had stopped creating chances and they needed a new approach. Fernando Llorente and Vincent Janssen came on, returning from exile in Spurs’ hour of need, but even his late surge was not enough to turn the game. He forced two saves from Lukasz Fabianski and then, in added time, headed a Juan Foyth cross against the post. The great Janssen redemption story has yet to be completed.

West Ham continued to be dangerous right until the end, Antonio and then Issa Diop forcing more saves from Lloris to keep it at 1-0. Diop managed to run 60 yards with the ball, through Alderweireld and Sanchez, before his weak finish. But by that point Dele Alli had gone off for Victor Wanyama, which said everything about Spurs’ priorities over the next few days. This game was not the priority, and it showed.