• Miss against Bolton in FA Cup was fourth of the season
• Huddlestone follows in footsteps of Defoe and Keane
Gareth Bale says his Tottenham Hotspur team-mates could be ordered to start practising penalties in training after a fourth miss from the spot in yesterday’s draw at 1-1 draw with Bolton Wanderers at the Reebok Stadium in the fifth round of the FA Cup.
Tom Huddlestone followed in the footsteps of Jermain Defoe and Robbie Keane earlier in the season when he failed to score from the spot. The replay will take place on Wednesday 24 February, with Bolton moving their match with Blackburn to Sunday. That game was scheduled to be the Monday evening game, just 48 hours before the Cup tie.
Bale said: “We don’t practise penalties really and it’s disappointing we missed one but things like that happen. Tom was down to take it before the game and he was unlucky. Will we practise them more now? You never know.”
Defoe said the side were criticised by the Spurs’ manager, Harry Redknapp, at half-time against Bolton. “We should have won it in the end,” Defoe said. “We had a bit of a rollicking at half-time and we deserved it because we didn’t compete in the first half. You know it’s always going to be difficult at Bolton. You have to compete and the rest of the game will then take care of itself, we know we’ll always create chances. First though, you have to compete otherwise a team like Bolton will get on top and that’s what happened in the first half.”
Defoe, after scoring against Bolton to take his tally to 21 this season, added: “There’s still a long way to go and I just want to keep doing what I’m doing, keep getting on the end of chances and try to score as many goals as possible.”
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