Just to clarify early on, if you are an Arsenal supporter and were hoping to see some of your sides goals in this list then you won't find any as I have the sort of treatment that exists in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to have them removed from my memory forever.
Instead, this is a list of the top 5 North London goals scored by the only team in the North London derby to actually originate from North London, the mighty Tottenham Hotspur. Will they add to this list this afternoon? I sincerely hope so but here's a selection of their best goals in recent times to whet the appetite.
No.5 Jermaine Jenas 2007 - Spurs 2 - 2 Arsenal
Last-minute equalisers feel almost as good as a winner. Jermaine Jenas was sometimes accused of not scoring enough goals from midfield for Spurs but he made a habit of scoring late goals to help break Gooner hearts - he scored Spurs 3rd in the 4-4 draw mentioned below.
In all honesty, it was a complete smash and grab by us on that day with Arsenal having outplayed us for most of the 90minutes but perhaps that is what makes it even more special ......
No. 4 Kyle Walker 2011 - Spurs 2 -1 Arsenal
You'll see a couple of references in the list of me having watched these matches at god awful times of the night because I was living in China on and off for a 5 year period. I watched this game in a hotel in Beijing. As I recall the game started around midnight and was the type helter-skelter affair that the North London Derby often throws up. Spurs went ahead thanks to a Van de Vaart effort in the first half but Aaron Ramsey, so often a thorn in our sides wrestled his side back into the game with the equaliser. It was anyone's to win before Kyle Walker broke onto a loose ball and hit an early swerving shot past Szczesny to get us all 3 points.
At breakfast the next morning, my friends who I'd been travelling with said they knew Spurs had won because my raucous celebrations in the room next to them had woken them up in the small hours, oops!
No. 3 David Bentley 2008 - Arsenal 4 - 4 Spurs
Again I was in China for this one and being as it was a midweek game (I think a Monday) it didn't start until 8pm local time which in China meant it was a 4am kick-off. Myself and a good friend who is an Arsenal supporter decided that we were going to stay up all night and watch it. We headed out to a bar and a couple of clubs and met a couple of other foreigners who were both Arsenal fans and said they'd pop round his later to watch the game with us. In the meantime, my friend picked up a girl in one of the clubs and took her back to his. He was still doing the business in the other room while I was jumping up and down on his sofa celebrating a different type of ecstasy as David Bentley volleyed us into the lead.
The other guys from the bar then showed up and my mate finally got his priorities straight and joined us for the 2nd half. I can tell you at 3-1 and 4-2 down it wasn't much fun sitting there with 3 Arsenal supporters but those 2 late goals certainly made it worth staying up all night! Ah to be young again .......
No.2 Danny Rose 2010, Spurs 2 -1 Arsenal
How to make yourself an instant hero - score a goal 10mintutes into your league debut against your side's bitterest rivals. That's what Danny Rose did when he hit this thunderbolt in 2010. I reckon he only touched the ball about 3 times in the first 45mins and despite scoring this absolute worldy he was taken off at half-time!
This goal and the win helped Spurs achieve qualification for the Champions League and laid a platform for us to seriously challenge Arsenal's supremacy that had been in place really since the begin of the Premier League.
No.1 Harry Kane 2016 - Spurs 2 -1 Arsenal
"He's one of our own, he's one of our own ........"
Great goal and great celebration! The passion that Kane shows playing for Spurs particularly in these big fixtures is what endears him to the fans. The celebration reminds me a bit of the Marco Tardelli goal in the World Cup Final 1982 - just sheer joy at having found the back of the net with a superb strike.
We'll need some of his passion and finishing if we are to get 3 points from today's game!
Comments