Spurs 3 Wolverhampton Wanderers 1 - match report

Fine detail is all that's missing, said Mick McCarthy. And, if you throw in a bit of luck as well, it really is a bit of fine tuning needed, writes Tim Nash.

With not a hint of road rage from his "dirty" team, it is difficult not to agree that a bit of tinkering under the bonnet would have seen Wolves through the chequered flag at White Hart Lane.

Last week it was the foolish concession of a late free-kick that cost them a place on the podium and a point at Fulham.

Seven days later, one missed penalty decision in the first half, combined with one grave error, one sloppy one and one farcical one in the second, cost them the point or three they could have easily laid claim to.

Now they will hope they can iron out the errors that have crept in - as well as perhaps have Lady Luck smile in their direction - to help them kick on again.

For 76 minutes, Wolves were fairly coasting, the game was going nowhere and McCarthy's side were heading for their third successive win against Spurs courtesy of Steven Fletcher's second goal in as many starts on the stroke of half-time.

True, they had Marcus Hahnemann to thank for not trailing in the first period after what McCarthy described as two 'world class' saves to deny Peter Crouch and Rafael van der Vaart's blockbuster, as well as smother from Gareth Bale.

But Wolves might have been ahead a lot earlier if referee Mike Jones had spotted Matt Jarvis being clattered by William Gallas deep inside the penalty area as the ball squirted clear following the winger's early darting run.

Looking from his glass half-full perspective, McCarthy rightly praised his players for having taken the lead in the last three games.

But, equally, he will be privately seething at the errors that have seen them end up with one point out of the last nine.

The cruel irony of this second successive setback in the capital was that Wolves did not came under the same amount of pressure as they did claiming that 1-0 victory at White Hart Lane last December.

McCarthy's men went into the game under intense scrutiny and there seemed a small, if perhaps subconscious, effort to not do anything to inflame their unfair reputation as the Premier League's bad-boys. However, it wasn't a tough-tackling sort of game and Wolves may have done enough for the national media to remove them from their position as their favourite punchbag.

Unfortunately for Wolves, individual errors allowed Spurs to come cascading through their ranks.

Which brings us to poor Stephen Ward.

On his last visit to this corner of north London, the Irishman was one of the star turns after so effectively shackling dangerman Aaron Lennon.

On Saturday, he must have thought he was heading for a near-repeat until his rash challenge on Alan Hutton turned the game.

Ward's body language after the incident - head bowed as he lay on the turf - suggested he knew the outcome of his actions before the referee pointed to the spot, even if he carried his vehement protest to the official long afterwards, claiming it was outside the area.

Replays proved it wasn't and Van der Vaart needed no second invitation to score from the spot for his first goal in English football and Spurs' first home strike of the season.

With the home players and crowd rejuvenated, there seemed only one outcome. Again Wolves seemed to suffer from a combination of their own sloppiness and the gods conspiring against them as Spurs went ahead.

First Ward's careless pass on halfway allowed former Wolves loan player Tom Huddlestone to break and, within a few seconds, Roman Pavlyuchenko's satnav could not have been better to steer home after Huddlestone's shot hit Jody Craddock and landed perfectly in his path.

If the first and second goals had an element of misfortune about them for Wolves, then the third was laced in slapstick.

Only it wasn't funny.

Like Ward, Richard Stearman had largely performed well on his first league start since Wigan last January.

But he made the wrong call in trying to usher a ball back to Hahnemann which never had enough weight on it as Hutton bore down on him.

And the former Leicester man's sliding challenge ended up cannoning off the substitute for a needlessly-conceded third goal to seal a flattering win for Spurs.

It really was one of those days, Wolves' luck summed up by the loss of their most dangerous player, Jarvis, through tight groins before the hour.

But, if anything good came out of it for Wolves, it was surely that in an almost exclusively controversy-free game, their slate is wiped clean.

The last thing McCarthy's side needed after a fortnight of damaging headlines and footage was more of the same.

Because there are more pressing issues - and Wolves need to address those mistakes.