1. Good things come to those who wait in European football

Thirty-nine years is a very long time for two sides with as proud a European pedigree as Spurs and Milan to go without playing each other. Likewise, eighty minutes is a long time for a side away from home in the Champions League to have to wait before they get the chance to run behind their opponents’ midfield. Peter Crouch’s winner for Tottenham ten minutes from the end of the game came about because Milan had finally started to seize the game’s initiative and so had left themselves vulnerable to the counter-attack. With the Italian side adopting the increasingly familiar practice of the home team in a European knockout tie, lining up deeper for fear of conceding an away goal, it was Spurs who had been on the front foot throughout the first half only to find chances on goal limited as Gennaro Gattuso, Mathieu Flamini and Thiago Silva formed a screen in front of the Milan defence. Two Mario Yepes headers in the second half – both brilliantly saved by Heurelho Gomes – encouraged the Serie A leaders forward as the game entered its final quarter but it was the Colombian defender who was left trailing in Aaron Lennon’s wake as the Tottenham winger centred for Crouch to score.

2. The San Siro brings out the best in Tottenham’s wingers

Aaron Lennon deserves as much praise for his performance in Milan as Gareth Bale received for his hat-trick against Inter back in October. However, while Bale’s inspirational display was ultimately in vain, his tramline-coiffured teammate’s efforts in the San Siro on Tuesday night played a vital part in Spurs’ remarkable victory. Before the game, the selection of Steven Pienaar over Niko Kranjčar on the left was a sign that Harry Redknapp would be looking for Spurs to maintain positional discipline in wide areas; at the same time, Kranjčar’s omission made the potential attacking threat offered by Lennon on the right all the more key. The England winger did not let his manager down. With Bale absent because of a back injury, Lennon had a chance to raise his international profile in the same place his Welsh counterpart did four months ago. He caused Luca Antonini many problems at left back, particularly in the first half when Spurs’ obvious ploy was to deliver the ball to Crouch in the area at every opportunity, with Lennon beating his marker to the byline to cross on more than one occasion.

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3. Gennaro Gattuso is “a little dog at best”

That was Graeme Souness’ assessment of the Rossoneri captain after the midfielder’s typically combustible performance ended with him picking a fight with 59-year-old Tottenham coach and ex-Milan forward Joe Jordan. All he’s good for is running around after the ball, qualified Souness. It’s not the first time that Gattuso’s headstrong behaviour has seen him act like he’s a panini short of a picnic – he’s made a career out of it, as this incident in the Milan derby two years ago proves – but the Italian international’s antics throughout the second half were pretty special even by his standards. Before attempting to headbutt Jordan after the final whistle but finding himself several inches too short to make a proper impact, Gattuso had already pushed his hand into the Scotsman’s face while the game was still in progress, raised his arms to Peter Crouch, and reacted to the yellow card he was finally awarded for a tackle on Steven Pienaar – which will keep Gattuso out of the second leg at White Hart Lane in three weeks’ time regardless of any retrospective action taken by UEFA for his behaviour at the end – by repeatedly smashing the turf with his fist.

4. Most games benefit from a bit of needle

Harry Redknapp hotfooted it to the side of the pitch for a sit-down interview with Sky Sports shortly after the final whistle, which gave him his first opportunity to see a replay of the tackle by Mathieu Flamini that ended Vedran Ćorluka’s game before an hour was up. The Milan midfielder’s lunge appeared to tick at least two of the boxes that need checking for a player to see a straight red these days, being both two-footed and off the ground, and yet he escaped with a yellow card. The former Arsenal player did win the ball, but that mitigating factor is not normally enough to keep an offending player on the pitch in these enlightened times. However, if the overly aggressive tackle was Flamini’s attempt to stoke up the crowd, and his defiant pose afterwards suggested that it was, then the extra edge that the incident gave to the game ultimately backfired on Milan. Ćorluka’s teammates must have seen him emerge from the tunnel on crutches to take up a watching brief from the bench for the remainder of the game, giving them even more of an incentive to get a result.

5. Jonathan Woodgate: still here

“I’m still here,” says Steve McQueen defiantly at the end of Papillon. If you haven’t seen the film (spoiler alert), it’s the 1973 adaptation of the prison memoir by convicted French murderer Henri Charrière. Whilst the author’s claims that the book represented a truthful account of his imprisonment at and eventual escape from a penal colony in French Guiana have been called into question lately, the film remains an uplifting portrayal of the human spirit’s indefatigability. Jonathan Woodgate would certainly have benefitted from watching it during his long recovery from a groin injury, given McQueen’s remark at the end. The defender hadn’t featured for Spurs for 15 months until his introduction for the final half-hour at the San Siro, brought about by Ćorluka’s enforced withdrawal; he was not even listed in his club’s 25-man squad for the first half of this season. Woodgate turned down a loan move to Wolves last month in order to fight for his place at White Hart Lane and against Milan on Tuesday night that decision was vindicated. The former Leeds, Newcastle, Real Madrid, and Middlesbrough man slotted in alongside Michael Dawson at the centre of the away side’s defence to help Spurs to their first away clean sheet in Europe this season and leave them ninety minutes from the quarter-finals of the Champions League.

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