{"id":2747,"date":"2008-03-20T02:43:33","date_gmt":"2008-03-20T02:43:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/sports-news\/premier-league-spurs-hold-chelsea-in-epic-match\/2747\/"},"modified":"2008-03-20T02:43:33","modified_gmt":"2008-03-20T02:43:33","slug":"premier-league-spurs-hold-chelsea-in-epic-match","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/premier-league-spurs-hold-chelsea-in-epic-match\/","title":{"rendered":"Premier League &#8211; Spurs hold Chelsea in epic match"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Tottenham put a dent in <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/uk.eurosport.yahoo.com\/football\/chelsea\/\"><font color=\"#135291\"><strong>Chelsea<\/strong><\/font><\/a><strong>&#8216;s title hopes by holding their London rivals to a 4-4 draw at White Hart Lane.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In a game which will surely go down as one of the best to be played in the Premier League, Spurs trailed 1-0, 3-1 and 4-3 but somehow fought back to claim an improbable point thanks to Keane&#8217;s brilliant curling effort from 25 yards out.<\/p>\n<p>It was Chelsea, though, who got off the a flying start after three minutes when <a href=\"http:\/\/uk.eurosport.yahoo.com\/football\/didier-drogba.html\"><font color=\"#135291\">Didier Drogba<\/font><\/a> headed past <a href=\"http:\/\/uk.eurosport.yahoo.com\/football\/paul-robinson.html\"><font color=\"#135291\">Paul Robinson<\/font><\/a> following <a href=\"http:\/\/uk.eurosport.yahoo.com\/football\/john-terry.html\"><font color=\"#135291\">John Terry<\/font><\/a>&#8216;s cross.<\/p>\n<p>Avram Grant&#8217;s side thought they had doubled their lead almost immediately as <a href=\"http:\/\/uk.eurosport.yahoo.com\/football\/joe-cole.html\"><font color=\"#135291\">Joe Cole<\/font><\/a> struck after Robinson had parried Drogba&#8217;s long range shot but the flag was up for offside.<\/p>\n<p>Almost out of nowhere Spurs levellled on 12 minutes through Carling Cup hero <a href=\"http:\/\/uk.eurosport.yahoo.com\/football\/jonathan-woodgate.html\"><font color=\"#135291\">Jonathan Woodgate<\/font><\/a> when the defender rose expertly to power a header past <a href=\"http:\/\/uk.eurosport.yahoo.com\/football\/carlo-cudicini.html\"><font color=\"#135291\">Carlo Cudicini<\/font><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But just seven minutes later Chelsea were back in front when man-of-the-match Joe Cole showed great skill to beat two men before threading a throughball into the path of <a href=\"http:\/\/uk.eurosport.yahoo.com\/football\/michael-essien.html\"><font color=\"#135291\">Michael Essien<\/font><\/a> who finished with aplomb from 12 yards out.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea were looking comfortable but the game boiled over on the stroke of half-time when <a href=\"http:\/\/uk.eurosport.yahoo.com\/football\/ashley-cole.html\"><font color=\"#135291\">Ashley Cole<\/font><\/a> caught <a href=\"http:\/\/uk.eurosport.yahoo.com\/football\/scotland\/\"><font color=\"#135291\">Scotland<\/font><\/a> international <a href=\"http:\/\/uk.eurosport.yahoo.com\/football\/alan-hutton.html\"><font color=\"#135291\">Alan Hutton<\/font><\/a> with a high and dangerous tackle for which he was lucky to only be shown a yellow card.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea started the second-half strongly and looked to have made the game secure on 52 as Joe Cole shrugged off the challenge of <a href=\"http:\/\/uk.eurosport.yahoo.com\/football\/pascal-chimbonda.html\"><font color=\"#135291\">Pascal Chimbonda<\/font><\/a> before his shot looped up and into the back of the net off the unfortunate Robinson.<\/p>\n<p>But their two-goal advantage lasted just nine minutes as once again they failed to deal with a corner, allowing <a href=\"http:\/\/uk.eurosport.yahoo.com\/football\/dimitar-berbatov.html\"><font color=\"#135291\">Dimitar Berbatov<\/font><\/a> to direct an excellent effort into the top corner.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/uk.eurosport.yahoo.com\/football\/tom-huddlestone.html\"><font color=\"#135291\">Tom Huddlestone<\/font><\/a> then levelled matters with 15 minutes remaining.<\/p>\n<p>The substitute picked up the ball 12 yards out at an angle on the right side of the Chelsea box and lashed a left-footed effort past Cudicini into the corner.<\/p>\n<p>Spurs looked to be in the ascendancy but the magnificent Joe Cole scored his second and Chelsea&#8217;s fourth on 80 minutes, spinning past Pascal Chimbonda and driving the ball into the roof of the net from 12 yards.<\/p>\n<p>Just when Chelsea thought Spurs had ran out of ideas, up popped Keane with a stunning curling effort.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/uk.eurosport.yahoo.com\/football\/ricardocarvalho.html\"><font color=\"#135291\">Ricardo Carvalho<\/font><\/a> turned his back on a high ball which hit him and fell into the path of Keane and the Irishman struck what could be a killer blow to Chelsea&#8217;s title hopes.<\/p>\n<p>Dimitar Berbatov almost won the points for Spurs in injury-time but a superb right-handed save from Cudicini denied the Bulgarian his second.<\/p>\n<p>TeamTalk \/ Eurosport<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tottenham put a dent in Chelsea&#8216;s title hopes by holding their London rivals to a 4-4 draw at White Hart Lane. In a game which will surely go down as one of the best to be played in the Premier League, Spurs trailed 1-0, 3-1 and 4-3 but somehow fought back to claim an improbable [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[94],"class_list":{"0":"post-2747","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news","7":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}