Bergvall rides luck to give Spurs a lift and leave Liverpool fuming

Tottenham feared it was going to be a story about a fresh take on VAR pain.

- David Hytner

There were 77 minutes on the clock, this Carabao Cup semi-final had finally started to bubble and Dominic Solanke thought he had put Spurs in front. It was not only a fine finish from Pedro Porro's searching through-ball but a goal of rich narrative possibility. This was a striker, remember, who had not enjoyed himself at Liverpool earlier in his career.

Enter the referee, Stuart Attwell, to explain, live and miked up, that Solanke had been offside. Attwell even blew his whistle into his microphone, which was a bit jarring. And yet there would be a twist. A glorious one in Spurs's eyes, one to fire the dream of a first trophy since 2008. And one to have Liverpool raging. Lucas Bergvall, the precociously talented Spurs midfielder, ought to have been sent off for cleaning out Kostas Tsimikas. He was already on a yellow card.

But now there Bergvall was, time almost up, striding onto a cut-back from Solanke to lash past Alisson. The stadium descended into bedlam. For Liverpool, there were recriminations, a rare bump in the road under Arne Slot.

Postecoglou is not exactly spoilt for selection choices at present; how he must envy Slot, whose strong starting XI was entirely by design. He had left a host of key players back on Merseyside for the quarter-final win at Southampton. Not here. Even his bench felt like a statement.