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Tottenham Hotspur 4 (Dawson 47, O’Hara 52, Pavyluchenko 65, Duff OG 68)

Burnley 1 (Paterson 15)

While Spurs ultimately ran out comfortable winners, they didn’t have it all their own way, and the scoreline was, in the end, quite flattering.

The night started with Tottenham fans in high spirits, as the returning Jermain Defoe was paraded in front of the crowd before kick off after completing his transfer from Portsmouth - less than a year after leaving the London club for the South coast. However, Burnley clearly hadn’t read the script, and obviously fancied adding a nother London club to their hit list after disposing of Chelsea and Arsenal in the earlier rounds. Burnley started the brighter and it took them just 15 minutes to silence White Hart Lane, as ex-Manchester United player Chris Eagles ran down the right hand side, beat 2 Tottenham players before crossing the ball across the edge of the 6 yard box, where Martin Paterson was waiting to tap home. The goal failed to spur (no pun intended) Tottenham into action though, and Burnley continued to be the better of the two teams, deservedly leading at half time.

All Burnley’s hard work was undone though, just 72 seconds into the second half, when Michael Dawson headed home a Jamie O’Hara corner. Burnley were stunned, but the worst was yet to come. Just 5 minutes later Spurs were on the attack again, and the ball fell perfectly for O’Hara to volley under the goalkeeper, and suddenly Spurs found themselves ahead, while Burnley were left wondering what has just happened. Less than 7 minutes after the restart, and the match had completely turned on its head.

Burnley’s heads’ went down and they were close to falling apart, Spurs continued to press and when Pavyluchenko beat a defender and drilled under the goalkeeper, you could almost see the Burnley players give up hope. There may have been a flicker of hope remaining for the second leg, but just 3 minutes later a Spurs free kick was floated in, and Burnley’s Michael Duff headed into his own goal under very little pressure to complete a great - but flattering - turnaround for Harry Redknapp’s men.

So Spurs will go into the second leg with a comfortable 4-1 aggregate lead, and will surely advance to the final now, but dont expect Burnley to roll over in the second leg, theres still plently of action left in this tie yet.

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