Tottenham embarrassment as players do lap of honour around empty stadium

Tottenham’s players had to complete their lap of appreciation in front of a near-empty stadium after their final home game of the Premier League season on Saturday. The north Londoners were beaten by Brentford after throwing away an early lead following Harry Kane’s goal in only the eighth minute, with a Bryan Mbeumo brace turning the tide for the Bees before Yoane Wissa added the icing on the cake as the full-time whistle approached.

The result capped off a hugely disappointing campaign for Spurs, who will be without Champions League football next season and are still waiting to win their first major trophy since lifting the League Cup all the way back in 2008. The frustration shared by supporters was clear to see during the post-match lap of appreciation, which is traditionally done after the final home game of the season, with a huge number of fans opting to leave the stadium rather than waiting for the players to come back out.

It meant that thousands of empty seats were on show as Tottenham’s players and staff, many of them accompanied by their families, trudged around the perimeter of the pitch to applaud to the remaining fans who had stayed to watch. The humiliation summed up yet another lacklustre season for Spurs, who will be desperate to do better under the guidance of a new permanent manager when the upcoming campaign gets underway.

It looked as though Tottenham were going to give their fans something to cheer about when Kane opened the scoring against Brentford during the early stages of the match, with the England talisman receiving the ball from Dejan Kulsevski’s free-kick before firing into the top corner from range. They managed to hang onto their slender lead until the interval but were pegged back just after the restart by Mbeumo, who picked out the far corner of the net with a sweet strike from the edge of the area.

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Brentford went on to complete their comeback 12 minutes later when Mbeumo doubled his tally for the afternoon by curling a left-footed effort past the flailing arms of Fraser Forster before Wissa eventually wrapped up all three points with a powerful finish from close range.

Tottenham interim boss Ryan Mason admitted that his side did not do enough to win the match, which also marked Lucas Moura’s final home Premier League game for Spurs, when quizzed on what went wrong after the final whistle.

He said: “You have to compete for 95 minutes. In the first half we played a very good match. 1-0 is a dangerous scoreline, and if you’re not at it for the whole game you get punished. The goals we conceded were poor. They were the better team in the second half, they deserved to win.

“When emotions are high it’s probably best not to speak to one another. We’ve been on a [poor] run for a number of months now. The only way to turn that around is winning games and staying together. When you come in at this stage of the season there are always difficulties.

“In the first half, we saw a Tottenham side that we haven’t seen this season, but we weren’t able to sustain it for many different reasons. There’s only one way to act, and if we can’t act that way it’s disappointing.”

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