Four memorable Fulham results at Tottenham

As we look to bag our first away win of the season, here are some fruitful trips to North London.

I’ll be honest straight off the bat: White Hart Lane, or the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (why rename it just because you’ve rotated it 90 degrees?) hasn’t been a happy hunting ground for us. But we’re going there on Saturday looking for our first away win of the season, and I’m clutching for straws of optimism, so I’ve squeezed out four of our best results there. (No, they’re not our only good results there, thank you very much.)

Tottenham 0-3 Fulham - 30 August 2003

This day was all about Barry Hayles.

At 31 years old, our Jamaican international showed he still had the minerals to be a force in the top flight, scoring a brace and assisting Luis Boa Morte as the Whites dismantled Glenn Hoddle’s side.

It was Bazza’s second and third goals of the season, having scored in our 3-1 away defeat to Everton a week earlier. He scored either side of half-time before helping Boa round off the rout with 20 minutes left.

Though he was known for playing well into his 40s, Hayles wasn’t the oldest player on the pitch that day, with both sides fielding veteran ‘keepers: we had Edwin Van Der Sar while Spurs played future Fulham goalkeeper Kasey Keller.

It was the start of Chris Coleman’s first full campaign as Whites boss, having assumed temporary control towards the end of the previous campaign. It was our second win in our opening three games, as we enjoyed a strong start that would see us as high as fourth by Christmas. Then Manchester United stole Louis Saha from us and it all went south (but only as far south as ninth).

Tottenham 0-1 Fulham - 17 March 2013

Ah, the blissful ignorance we had.

This, on the face of it, was a lovely old day. A relatively straightforward 1-0 win away to a Champions League-chasing side, using their old talismanic striker to do it. Dimitar Berbatov returned to White Hart Lane and finished a Sascha Riether cross to give us all three points.

The win took us to 10th, and we really looked like part of the Premier League furniture under former Spurs boss Martin Jol. But in reality the malaise that had set in at the highest level of the club meant we were sleepwalking to disaster - and that duly came the following season.

Only four of our starting XI were under the age of 30 - and one of them, Riether, was only a week away from that milestone birthday. And if you want to see our “owner-has-a-foot-out-the-door” transfer strategy in a nutshell, just look at the men brought on that day: loanees Eyong Enoh and Urby Emanuelson. Nope, me neither.

Tottenham 1-1 Fulham - 13 January 2021

This was memorable if only for the way Scott Parker’s Fulham teased us throughout the 2020/21 campaign.

It was grim. It was lockdown. We were - frankly - shite. And to make matters worse, we could watch every game on TV, so we felt compelled to watch this season-long nightmare unfold, as if someone was holding our eyes open.

To add to this fever dream, not only was Jose Mourinho manager of Spurs, no fewer than four of the players in our squad that day are still at the club (granted, Joachim Andersen left then returned).

Spurs went ahead through Harry Kane (who else), leaving most of us resigned to our ninth defeat of the 16-game-old season. But somehow, Ivan Cavaleiro, the man Parker famously preferred up top to Aleksander Mitrovic, equalised with 15 minutes left. The point put us within two points of Brighton in 17th (what were they doing down there?), with two games in hand thanks to COVID cancellations. We were dreaming.

But we needn’t have bothered; we picked up just 16 more points and went down with a whimper.

Tottenham 1-1 Fulham - 1 December 2024

OK, OK - I did say I was squeezing the best ones out.

Almost exactly a year ago we bagged a point against a Spurs side that was still enjoying a solid start under Ange Postecoglu, while we were also in the top-half mix.

It was memorable only for the wild afternoon endured by TC, who cancelled Brennan Johnson’s 54th-minute opener with 33 minutes left, befre getting sent off 15 minutes later for a foul on Dejan Kulusevski.

The draw gave us 19 points from 13 games. A similar result on Saturday would give us 15 from 13, while a win would give us 17. That’d change the complexion of this season, wouldn’t it?

It’s a big ask, but Spurs have won just once at home this season and are reeling from a NLD defeat and a chaotic, topsy-turvy loss in Paris within the last week.

If we strike while the iron’s hot, we could create the most memorable result of them all.