Young Harry Kane always scores. That's what you found yourself thinking when he came off the bench with Spurs cruising at 2-1 against Sunderland on Saturday. Then he did, in the wrong net, to present Sunderland with one of the most undeserved points in their long history.
A week is a long time in politics and an international break is an aeon in football. Tottenham were so comprehensively dismantled in their previous game by Liverpool that at times it looked like the two teams belonged in different leagues. But on Saturday Liverpool surrendered meekly to Aston Villa at Anfield while Tottenham ran rings round Sunderland at the Stadium of Light for the whole 90 minutes. Their failure to secure all three points against a team that had only one shot on target was down to a couple of familiar defensive lapses for which consolation can be found in the possibility that none of the back four will be first choices before long; Walker, Davies, Vertonghen and Fazio are waiting in the wings. This might be harsh on the full backs Dier and Rose who have started the season well, but Kaboul looks increasingly creaky and Chiriches looks to be afflicted with David Luiz syndrome, the symptoms of which are being pretty good at football but very bad at defending.
The whole front six played well though, with Lamella the exciting pick of the bunch. He's now playing with confidence and joie de vivre and he'll continue to improve.
Faced with the stultifying ennui of international football, fans and journalists get caught up in a kind of two-week silly season and there aren't many better places to look for off-the-field intrigue than Tottenham Hotspur FC. First we had headlines saying the club was up for sale with a price tag of a billion quid. (As if that were news; my Vespa is also up for sale if you want to give me fifty grand for it). Then an actual bid materialised from a sinister sounding 'international property group' called Cain Hoy Enterprises. USA-based but headed up in Europe by Spurs fan Jonathan Goldstein - who is well acquainted with the THFC board - they have until October 10 to formalise their approach by which time Spurs will have played West Brom, Southampton and Arsenal in the Premier League. Six points or more from that run would leave the team looking like plausible top four contenders and the prospect of the Champions League would surely add allure.
The other thing making Cain Hoy salivate is the new stadium but because of the renewed intransigence of Archway Steel - the effective sitting tenants on the last remaining bit of land needed for construction - the club have announced that the team will have to play a season on a borrowed ground. This didn't come as a surprise to most Spurs fans who have been speculating and moaning-in-advance about the likely relocation for months. Rumour has it that a couple of possibilities have been made more difficult because of Daniel Levy putting noses out of joint with his uncompromising business approach, would you believe. It's said that West Ham have no desire to lend Tottenham the condemned Boleyn Ground or share the Olympic Stadium because they are still cross about Levy's ruthless efforts to nick the latter off them altogether. Meanwhile the FA are reluctant to loan Spurs Wembley Stadium because Levy has been courting the NFL and offering the new Lane as a a venue for gridiron, a lucrative gig that the FA would like for themselves.
But both these arenas are owned by public bodies who can't go round throwing useful extra revenue back into people's faces, however irksome they find them. The sensible solution might be to play the bigger games at Wembley or The Olympic Stadium and the rest at Milton Keynes which, according to Google Maps, is a mere one hour and 18 minutes from White hart Lane. 'Without traffic'.
Theo Delaney is a guest on this week's Spurs Show podcast