Tottenham 1 Newcastle United 1

The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium was completely vacant yesterday, yet when referee Peter Bankes drew an imaginary square in the air and pointed to the penalty spot deep into stoppage time, it was still possible to hear a collective intake of breath preceding a pause that was only broken by the anguished wails of Jose Mourinho in his technical area.

What on earth do you make of that? Has football really changed so markedly that the handball rules have become so utterly unfathomable?

Leaving aside any parochial bias, it is hard to feel anything by sympathy for Eric Dier, who was looking in a completely different direction when Andy Carroll’s headed knock-down from the edge of the area struck the back of his arm.

There had been contentious penalty decisions awarded against both Crystal Palace and Brighton yesterday, but neither felt as unjust or unwarranted as this. How on earth was Dier meant to get out of the way of the ball given that it was headed from no more than two yards away from him? Where was he supposed to put his arms to prevent the concession of a spot-kick? And is this really what VAR was introduced to do?

From the moment he walked over to the pitch-side monitor, there was a grim inevitability to Bankes’ decision to award a spot-kick, with any semblance of ‘common sense refereeing’ having been removed from a referee’s arsenal. Callum Wilson drove home from the spot to earn Newcastle a point, Mourinho flounced straight down the tunnel in fury, and Spurs’ players did not know whether to yell or sob. Either way, their anger was both palpable and easy to understand.

It felt like a travesty, and Spurs’ collective sense of anger will only have bene heightened by the extent of their dominance in the previous 90 minutes. Lucas Moura’s first-half strike was the least they deserved, indeed they would have been out of sight long before stoppage time had Son Heung-min not twice hit the woodwork or Newcastle goalkeeper Karl Darlow not produced a string of superb saves.

The best you could say about Newcastle is that they refused to cave in, defending manfully without fashioning a single effort on target from open play. Ultimately, of course, they didn’t have to.

From the very first minute, Steve Bruce’s game plan was clear. Having watched his side claim a successful smash-and-grab raid at Tottenham’s gleaming new stadium last August, the Newcastle boss lined his side up in an attempt to stage a repeat.

Isaac Hayden was shuffled from his usual position in midfield into one of the three central-defensive roles in a five-man backline that also featured Matt Ritchie, deputising for the injured Jamal Lewis at left-back.

A line of four was positioned in front of the back five, with Joelinton, on the left-hand side, and Miguel Almiron, on the right, much more concerned with their defensive duties than anything more adventurous or creative in the Spurs half. Wilson, stationed as a lone striker, could hardly have been a better proponent of self-isolation.

Containment was unequivocally the name of the game, but it did not really work. Indeed, Newcastle’s modus operandi would have been rendered completely redundant inside the opening ten minutes had Darlow not made three sensational saves to bail out his back five.

Standing in for the injured Martin Dubravka, Darlow’s first intervention was a superb double save just three minutes in. Having palmed away Giovanni Lo Celso’s goal-bound free-kick, Darlow produced an even better stop as he flung himself to the ground again to prevent Kane scoring from the rebound.

Six minutes later, and Newcastle’s goalkeeper was called into action again, clawing away Kane’s header after the England skipper eased between Hayden and Javier Manquillo to meet Lo Celso’s cross.

It felt like a siege, and while Newcastle’s players began to settle themselves as the game unfolded, their inability to hold on to possession or spend any meaningful time at all in the Tottenham half proved their undoing.

Panic ensued on the rare occasions the Magpies had the ball, with Almiron, Joelinton and Jonjo Shelvey all passing up possession cheaply as a white wave continued to wash relentlessly into the Newcastle half.

The visitors’ defence was never going to remain unbreached amid such pressure, and sure enough, Spurs claimed the opener their play fully merited midway through the first half.

It was a simple enough goal when it eventually arrived, with Kane, who has become much more of a creator this season, fashioning sufficient space in order to deliver a low cross from the left. A sliding Lo Celso failed to make contact in the middle of the goal, but as Ritchie made the fatal mistake of allowing the ball to pass across his body, Lucas was on hand to slide home at the back post.

The concession did not prompt Bruce to change his conservative game-plan, and Newcastle were fortunate that Spurs were not completely out of sight by half-time.

Darlow made another excellent save, tipping Kane’s curled effort around the post, before the woodwork came to the Magpies’ rescue of two separate occasions, both of which were instigated by Son Heung-min.

The South Korean has made a blistering start to the season, and could hardly have come closer to adding to the four goals he scored against Southampton seven days earlier.

He hit the base of the left-hand post with a fine curled effort after opening up his body on the edge of the penalty area, before rattling the crossbar with an even better 20-yard strike after Matt Doherty nodded the ball into his path.

Darlow had no chance with either effort, but while they could easily have been five or six down at the break, Newcastle almost headed into half-time on level terms as Shelvey took aim with a first-time volley from Ritchie’s cross, only for his crisply-hit strike to fly narrowly wide of the upright. Had the ball found the net, it really would have been daylight robbery.

In fairness to Newcastle, the fact they were still in the game at the break enabled them to put up a semblance of a fight in the second half, when they at least began to claw back the discrepancy in possession statistics that had opened up in the first period.

The Magpies enjoyed their best spell of the game in the opening stages of the second half – a relative term, admittedly – and fashioned an opportunity on the hour mark that saw Jeff Hendrick drag a shot wide of the post.

Darlow was still busy at the other end, saving from Kane and Harry Winks, and just as Tim Krul once broke the Premier League record for the number of saves in a game at White Hart Lane, so Newcastle’s current goalkeeper once again performed a one-man act of resistance against a free-flowing Spurs attack.

It proved crucial. Shelvey swung a stoppage-time free-kick into the area, but even the most optimistic of Newcastle supporters would not have been screaming for a penalty when the ball struck Dier’s arm. No matter. The spot-kick was given, and Wilson did the rest.