Late own goal earns point for Tottenham after Hauge double

These are strange times for Tottenham.

- Jonathan Wilson

Historically they’ve often been a side whose performances didn’t match their results, but tradition has it they would be pretty and ineffective. Under Thomas Frank they’ve become the opposite. Just as at Brighton they went 2-0 down and came back to draw; again, there was more to admire in their character than how they played. And if Andreas Helmersen’s effort hadn’t hit the bar with a couple of minutes remaining, it would have been a very different story.

This was Bodø/Glimt’s first home game in the group phase of the Champions League, and they were determined to make the most of it. The pre-match singing of the club anthem was heartfelt and gently moving, and followed by the rhythmic detonation of a series of fireworks, startlingly loud in the still Arctic night. European football has little place these days for romance but Glimt remain an example of what can be achieved by enlightened leadership even in a remote town of just over 50,000 population.

They may have won four of the past five Norwegian championships, and be handily placed as this season’s title race enters the run-in, but this is not a club that has become sated by silverware. Their recent success has not quite come from nowhere - they did have a handful of second-placed finishes, but in the eighties, as they slid into the third flight, Glimt weren’t even the biggest team in Bodø, that honour belonging to Grand.