Robbie Keane converted a penalty with two minutes remaining to rally Tottenham past relegation-threatened West Bromwich Albion 2-1 on Monday.
It was the Irish striker's second goal of the game and came after Albion's Polish goalkeeper Tomasz Kuszczak lost control of the ball just outside his penalty area and brought down Jermain Defoe, who was racing toward the goal.
Keane struck home the penalty for his 13th goal of the season and Tottenham strengthened its hold on fourth place, while West Brom remained just above the relegation zone. Spurs have 55 points, three more than Blackburn and five more than sixth place Arsenal.
West Brom remains three points ahead of Birmingham and Portsmouth in the struggle to avoid relegation but has played one more game.
The visitor, which beat Tottenham 2-0 at home in December, went ahead through a well-worked free kick in the 21st.
Michael Carrick was harshly judged to have felled Nathan Ellington on the left and, when Jonathan Greening swung in a well-judged free kick, Curtis Davies won the ball in the air to glance a header inside the far post.
Tottenham created few chances in the opening 40 minutes but Kuszczak had to thwart Spurs twice just before halftime.
Keane stepped over a through ball from Edgar Davids that went to Defoe, who controlled the ball and fired a rising, right-footed shot which Kuszczak had to push around the post with a diving save.
In a spell of Spurs pressure, Ledley King's goalbound shot was deflected wide by West Brom midfielder Ronnie Wallwork and then Kuszczak tipped a low shot from Aaron Lennon wide of the post.
Spurs manager Martin Jol, a former West Brom player, sent on Egyptian striker Ahmed Mido to set up a three-man strikeforce alongside Defoe and Keane with 31 minutes to go.
Mido almost leveled with his first touch on a Spurs breakaway from a West Brom corner, but his low, angled shot shaved the far post with the keeper beaten.
But the equalizer came in the 68th minute when Spurs put together a slick series of passes and Carrick's through ball found Keane, who lobbed the ball over Kuszczak.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier