Redknapp pleased with shift of focus

Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp was pleased to leave the courtroom and focus on football on Tuesday.

Redknapp, who has been on trial for alleged tax evasion this week, saw his Tottenham side stroll to a 3-1 win over Wigan at White Hart Lane, with Gareth Bale scoring twice for the winners.

The victory kept Tottenham just five points from Manchester City and Manchester United at the top of the league and Redknapp believes his side are still alive in the title race.

“It was great to get on my feet and walk around a bit tonight as I’ve been doing a lot of sitting down the last few days,” the Spurs boss said.

“Winning this match was all important. I look at the 13-point gap we have on Arsenal and the seven point gap on Chelsea and it is looking good for us.”

“With Manchester City losing, I suppose we are back in the title race as well, but I’m still looking to keep teams behind us if we are being honest.”

The win came at a cost for Tottenham though, who will need to rotate their squad over the coming weeks to cover their injury problems.

“We have picked up a few injuries tonight and that is a concern,” he said.

“Rafael Van der Vaart has done his calf again, Manu (Emmanuel) Adebayor has tweaked his hamstring and Kyle Walker has picked up a knock as well. Still, we have a good squad here and they will all play their part now.”

Tottenham made several changes to their squad on transfer deadline day, with Everton’s Louis Saha joining on a short-term contract until the end of the season.

Spurs let Steven Pienaar (Everton) and Sebastien Bassong (Wolves) out on loan for the remainder of the season and sold Russian striker Roman Pavlyuchenko to Lokomotiv Moscow.

Wigan manager Roberto Martinez bemoaned his side’s first-half effort and felt his side did not come to play until it was too late.

“We were not good enough in the first half and made it far too easy for Tottenham ad Gareth Bale in particular to enjoy his football,” Martinez said.

“You could see the difference when we started to play as we should do in the second half as we had chances and pushed Spurs back, but the game was gone by then.”