A late goal from defender Jonathan Woodgate gave Spurs what could be a crucial three points in the fight against relegation as they beat fellow Premiership strugglers Hull 2-1 on Monday.
Woodgate’s header four minutes from time gave Spurs only their second win in their last 10 Premier League matches and first away win since beating West Ham on Dec. 8.
For Hull relegation appears to be a real possibility as they have registered just one victory in their last 17 Premier League Games and are now just six points above the drop zone.
PHOTO: AP
Spurs manager Harry Redknapp said he believed that his side had deserved the victory but bemoaned the fact that ahead of him and the club this week lies a UEFA Cup second leg clash with Shakhtar Donetsk, who beat them 2-0 in last week’s first leg, tomorrow and then their defense of the League Cup against Manchester United on Sunday.
“We’ve got to play on Monday and Thursday and we’ve got a Cup final on Sunday. It’s ludicrous,” Redknapp said.
Hull had gone close to taking the lead a quarter of an hour in but it was not of their making — as Woodgate’s header back to Spurs ’keeper Carlo Cudicini went past the Italian but he recovered to avoid conceding an embarrassing own goal.
However, Spurs were ahead two minutes later as Hull left Aaron Lennon unmarked at a corner and Luka Modric, seeing his team-mate unattended, passed to him. Lennon made no mistake with his shot.
The hosts recovered their composure after that blow and 10 minutes later were deservedly level as Michael Turner turned the ball into the net after a corner had been missed by Cudicini and the ball had cannoned off Spurs’ Wilson Palacios.
Spurs fullback Vedran Corluka almost restored his side’s lead in the second-half when his header from a freekick beat Matt Duke but came back off the crossbar.
Hull hit back, though, as Kamil Zayatte put in a good header with just under 15 minutes left, only for it to come off the far post as both sides pressed for what would probably be the winner.
That eventually came four minutes from the end as Woodgate rose to meet Benoit Assou-Ekotto’s cross and beat Duke.
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