Adebayor at the double as Newcastle crumble at St James’.
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Emmanuel Adebayor scored a brace as Tottenham overcame Newcastle 4-0 at St James’ Park to keep the pressure on fourth placed Liverpool.
Adebayor took his haul to nine goals in 13 games since being recalled by head-coach Tim Sherwood on a night when summer signings Paulinho and Nacer Chadli also found the back of the net.
But with Liverpool coming from behind to beat basement club Fulham 3-2, Spurs remained three points adrift of a Champions League place.
However, this result still made it a miserable night for Newcastle manager Alan Pardew as the Magpies marked his 150th game in charge of the north-east club with a fourth successive home defeat.
This victory was Spurs’ first in eight visits to St James’ Park, but more importantly extended their impressive run since losing 6-0 to Manchester City.
They have now won six and drawn one of their seven games since that humiliation and a top four finish is well within their reach.
In contrast, Newcastle have problems at both end of the pitch. They had conceded three goals in each of their previous two games and have now failed to score in five of their last six.
The opening stages did little to raise hopes that they could alter either of these recent trends and Tottenham could have been ahead long before they scored in the 19th minute.
As it was, Spurs broke the deadlock when Newcastle goalkeeper Tim Krul could only palm Nabil Bentalab’s cross on a rain-soaked surface into the path of Adebayor and the Togo striker was never likely to miss such a chance in his current run of form.
Aaron Lennon then began to exploit Newcastle’s fragile confidence, particularly when he moved inside from his left-wing role.
He had an unconvincing penalty appeal turned down but then went much closer to a goal by hitting the post.
Newcastle, rarely threatened to find a way past Spurs goalkeeper Hugo Lloris in the opening half, although their system featured two forwards in Papiss Cisse and Luuk de Jong.
Lloris was though seriously troubled once when the pair combined well to set up a chance for Cisse but the France international saved brilliantly.
Pardew would not have been fooled, the Newcastle manager knowing as well as anyone at St James’ that his team had been second-best to a Tottenham side displaying far more movement, power and technique.
Sours’ second goal arrived within eight minutes of the restart and Adebayor again played a crucial role when the Newcastle defence negligently allowed him too much space just outside the area.
The striker drilled in a low shot that was well saved by Krul, vut the Dutch international was again let down by his defenders who allowed Paulinho to beat them to the loose ball and tap in a goal that effectively settled the match.
Newcastle gave Spurs a few problems in the final 20 minutes, with Lloris forced to make a good save from Yoan Gouffran and even better one from Mathieu Debuchy.
But it was Tottenham who completed the scoring with two more goals.
Adebayor scored again after Krul beat out a shot from Andros Townsend in the 82nd minute and Chadli put the icing on the cake two minutes from time with a 25-yard strike to warm the hearts of Spurs fans on the long journey home to north London.
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