The_Guardian_-_2016-12-29

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Premier League
Tottenham beat 10-man Southampton as Dele
Alli hits double to lead fightback
Dele Alli scores his second and Tottenham’s fourth goal to complete their victory. Photograph: Julian
Finney/Getty Images
Tottenham Hotspur had been forced to wait and, as each one of their top-six rivals won on Boxing
Day or Tuesday, it might have felt pretty tortuous. But when they finally got their festive programme
under way they made it count – and how.
Southampton 1-4 Tottenham Hotspur: Premier
League – as it happened!
Read more
Mauricio Pochettino’s team shrugged off a second-minute concession to Virgil van Dijk and a
generally sloppy start to produce a show of strength, in which Dele Alli scored twice and both Mousa
Dembélé and Christian Eriksen sparkled around him. Danny Rose was also excellent.
Southampton played the final 33 minutes with 10 men after Nathan Redmond’s sending-off for a foul
on the goal-bound Alli and they were overwhelmed.
The visitors could even afford to miss a penalty in faintly comic circumstances – Harry Kane lifting
his kick high over the crossbar after Redmond’s red-card offence – and they will remember it was in
this fixture last December that they sparked their title charge with an impressive 2-0 win.
This performance was even more eye-catching. Kane had put them in front early in the second half,
after Alli’s first-half equaliser, and they turned the screw once Southampton were a man down. The
substitute, Son Heung-min, raced on to an Eriksen pass to drill home the third – it was the most