Tottenham inflicted Arsenal's fourth loss of the Premier League season today, winning the north London derby 2-1 to give Arsene Wenger a miserable start to his 16th year as Gunners manager.Rafael van der Vaart scored the 10,000th goal in Tottenham history just before halftime and Kyle Walker clinched the victory with his first for the club in the 73rd minute after Aaron Ramsey's equalizer for Arsenal.
Tottenham started the brightest, and Wojciech Szczesny was called into action after five minutes when Alex Song gave the ball away softly, allowing Van der Vaart to feed Scott Parker, whose shot was tame and duly saved.At the end of a fast-paced but chance-thin opening 20 minutes, Gareth Bale stole Ramsey's attempted pass and skipped 60 yards in the blink of an eye before pulling it back to Van der Vaart on the edge of the area, but the Dutchman's unorthodox finish went innocuously over the bar.
Higuain treble seals Real Madrid win at Espanyol
Gonzalo Higuain hit three goals as Real Madrid moved to within a point of fierce rivals Barcelona at the top of La Liga on Sunday night following a 1-0 win in the Catalan capital against Espanyol at Cornella.Madrid, like Barcelona, were playing in black, and just as their arch-adversaries had done earlier in the evening in Gijon, the capital club secured a hard-fought away success.
Higuain was in for the injured Karim Benzema, one of a number of sidelined stars for coach Jose Mourinho, who was also missing Pepe, Ricardo Carvalho, Fabio Coentrao and long-term absentee Nuri Sahin.In the absence of the two Portugal defenders, right-back Sergio Ramos partnered Spain team-mate Raul Albiol in a makeshift central defensive pairing and the duo did not look entirely secure at the back.
Nor did Espanyol, however, and the locals almost conceded after three minutes, when Cristiano Ronaldo's fierce drive was parried clumsily by Argentine keeper Cristian Alvarez, who must have been mightily relieved to see the ball rebound off his right-hand post and out to safety.
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