Tottenham held the house-warming party for their new White Hart Lane stadium on Wednesday night, striding over the threshold and bedding themselves in with a comfortable 2-0 win over Crystal Palace.
An opening ceremony preceded kick-off, with former X-Factor contestants and the opera singer from the ‘Go Compare’ adverts all featuring amid the fireworks and fanfare…
Palace defender James Tomkins later branded the ceremony “surreal” and complained that it “went on a bit”, which is hard to argue with.
Anyway, the first ‘proper’ goal (with apologies to J’Neil Bennett) at Spurs’ new £1billion, 62,000-capacity digs was eventually scored by Son Heung-Min in the 55th minute of the encounter.
The South Korean forward cut inside and tucked away his 17th goal of the season – though perhaps the only one that is liable to ascend into the vaunted ‘pub trivia’ echelon…
Poor old Harry Kane, eh? He was visibly desperate to score on Tottenham’s big night. Oh well, narrative be damned. It wasn’t to be.
Indeed, it was Christian Eriksen who added a second ten minutes from time to complete what was actually a rather standard win over a largely inert Palace side.
The real star attraction was of course the glitzy new confines which, public transport issues aside, has instantly made all other Premier League stadiums look horrendously dated.
Given Spurs’ rank form of late, maybe it will prove enough of a catalyst for Mauricio Pochettino’s team to squirrel their way to a top-four finish.