Tottenham fans have vented their fury after re watching Manchester City’s Mateo Kovacic avoided a second yellow card for a challenge on Declan Rice and Lankshear was given red card last night despite carbon copy situation
Referee Michael Oliver initially gave the midfielder a yellow card, but VAR checked the incident for a possible red card for serious foul play.
And as footage was aired across the Emirates Stadium, Gunners fans were audibly calling for Kovacic to be shown a straight red.
There was then more drama shortly afterwards, with Kovacic producing an almost exact replica of the Odegaard tackle – this time on Rice in Arsenal’s half.
Tottenham Hotspur pushed Galatasaray despite disadvantage
Spurs were always going to struggle with this away game against a very strong Galatasaray team, and the Turkish outfit made the Lilywhites pay for a number of costly mistakes throughout the night.
Things were made all the more difficult when Will Lankshear, who had scored his first senior goal in the first-half, picked up a red card on the hour-mark to reduce his team to ten men.
The score was 3-1 at that point, but with a few substitutions and a renewed fight and optimism, Spurs managed to get themselves right back in the game with a Dominic Solanke goal, and kept pushing for more until the final whistle.
Sadly, it wasn’t to be, and Tottenham have now suffered their first Europa League defeat of the season.
Ben Davies consoles Will Lankshear after red card
Discussing the game with Tottenham’s official social media account, Ben Davies touched on the impact of Lankshear’s red card, how he and the team are helping the youngster get over the disappointment, and how close Spurs went to grabbing a point from the game.
“It was a tough game, especially that first-half, and I think our mistakes were our biggest downfall. We needed to handle the atmosphere a bit better than we did in the first-half, because by the end I think, even with ten men, we were the only team going for it.
“It was a little bit too late. Unfortunately for Will [Lankshear], these things happen, but he will learn from that; he’s devastated in there but it’s up to us to help him through it now. It was a valiant fight in the end, but not quite enough.
“We always felt we had a good chance if we kept pushing, but we probably left ourselves a little bit too much to do.”
A learning curve for whole Tottenham team
The nature of the defeat was really disappointing, from the sloppy play at the back, to the fact we couldn’t quite get that equaliser once we started to dominate the game. But, we always knew this was going to be the toughest Europa League test, and we come away from it with a couple of goals, a resilient reaction, and very nearly a point against an unbeaten side.
