Every Dog Has Its Day

The image of Gennaro Gattuso, kicking his feet and punching his fists on the San Siro turf in frustration will live long in the memory of the White Hart Lane faithful. And rightly so.

His behaviour reminded me of my 2 year old son, Liam, when he can’t get his own way.

As Liam normally finds out, his strops are not big, or clever, and normally get him 5 minutes on the naughty step. Gattuso might have a more severe punishment heading his way than that, now that UEFA are investigating his actions.

So, how's Glasgow these days?

Putting his imbecility to one side though, last night belonged to Tottenham, and their magnificent performance at the San Siro,

They were superb from front to back. Their defence looked rock solid which is staggering when you think what it looked like on their last visit here, and the two holding midfielders, Palacios and Sandro were immense, providing a shield to the back four that stopped Milan’s front three playing.

The first half was one-way traffic, with a succession of Tottenham crosses causing the Italians all sorts of problems. Milan could easily have been down and out by half-time.

And it wasn’t until 20 minutes into second half, when Flamini leapt into a reckless 2-footed tackle on Corluka that the game really kicked into life for the home side. As Corluka laid in agony, Flamini, the former Arsenal midfielder, gesticulated to the crowd triumphantly, as if to get them going.

It was a poor show and warranted a straight red. He got a yellow.

Why UEFA cannot go back and look at the referee’s decision again is a ridiculous; it may not be within their protocol, but challenges like this must be sufficiently punished, and if that requires retrospective action, so be it. Referees cannot be expected to get decisions right all of the time in the heat of battle.

Gattuso then started hounding the officials to restart the match, with Corluka still on the ground in pain. He then became embroiled in a heated debate with Joe Jordan, the upshot of which saw Gattuso grabbing Jordan by the throat and pushing him away.

“We were talking in Scottish, which I learnt when I played in Glasgow” Gattuso explained later. He seemed to know what he was talking about alright.

For a while, I thought Spurs might lose their cool, but they didn’t. Harry substituted Van Der Vaart, perhaps sensing he was starting to rise to the bait, and threw on Modric. A masterstroke.

Spurs cooled their heads and began retaining possession again.

In the 80^th minute, as Milan went in search of that elusive goal, their attack was broken up, again, by the outstanding Sandro, who fed Modric to unleash Lennon.

Lennon’s 60 yard dash with the ball under close control reminded us all what an asset he could be to England in this kind of form. Crouch’s finish was clinical, but Lennon made the goal almost single handedly.

"You can stop running now Aarron, Gattuso is still talking to JJ."

1-0, and richly deserved. Milan later scored, but it was ruled offside, correctly, a decision that sparked the chaos at the final whistle that led to Gattuso planting a head-butt, albeit a lame one, on Joe Jordan’s face.

Spurs will fancy their chances of getting the job done back at the Lane, and progress to the last-eight of the Champions League at the first time of asking. Easy isn’t it, this Champions League malarkey?

Gattuso, the “Dog”, as Graeme Souness described him after the game (brilliant), will miss the 2^nd leg; he’ll be busy putting together his case for the defence for his UEFA enquiry.

Good luck with that.