Under-21s secure top spot with excellent win at Fulham

Our Under-21s made sure of a first-place finish in the league phase of the season with a well-earned 2-0 win at Fulham on Friday night.

Goals either side of the break from Will Lankshear - which also made him the league's outright top scorer with 18 for the season - got the job done as we secured top spot with a game to spare, a terrific achievement for Wayne Burnett's young squad.

The display at Motspur Park was reflective of how well we've played over the course of the campaign, our second goal in particular standing out after Lankshear finished off a 29-pass team move that lasted over a minute.

Luca Gunter made a couple of superb stops at the other end, even after news filtered through of second-place West Ham's 3-1 home defeat to Leicester City, which meant we'd have finished first regardless of our result against the Cottagers. Centre-back Alfie Dorrington was also influential on his return from an injury setback while Under-18s left-back Maeson King produced a characteristically hard-working performance on his Under-21s debut, but in truth you could have picked out every player for praise after a fine team outing, with the Premier League 2 next week set to break off into a play-off system involving the top 16 teams to determine the overall winners.

Centre-forward Lankshear came into the game level with West Ham's Callum Marshall at the top of the scoring charts on 16 but after a 30-minute delay to kick-off, he didn't hang around in taking the outright lead, clinically firing us ahead after just 13 minutes when Jamie Donley's clever ball into the box hit Delano M'Coy Splatt and fell kindly for him inside the area.

After a number of early offside calls, Fulham sprung in behind our defence on a couple of occasions but Callum Osmand and Aaron Loupalo Bi were denied by excellent last-ditch defending from centre-half Dante Cassanova and right-back Rio Kyerematen. The Cottagers also threatened with a handful of crosses from their right flank in the first half but couldn't take advantage, while Lankshear slid a couple of attempts agonisingly wide at the other end before converting Dorrington's low cross on 33 minutes, only to see his effort ruled out for offside.

Gunter produced an excellent save at the start of the second half to keep out Adrion Pajaziti's back-post header and later denied Osmand with a low stop on his line, but we continued to play some nice stuff and after a clever ball forward, Lankshear took a touch in the box but saw his shot cannon back off the post with 77 minutes on the clock.

Two minutes later, though, the front man was celebrating once again as a wonderful team move ended with Kyerematen poking the ball through for him in the right channel, he stayed onside and gleefully finished past goalkeeper Alfie McNally to double his and our tally. By that stage, we were already assured of top spot after West Ham's defeat to Leicester - their game kicked-off half-an-hour earlier - but we had to stay alert at the back as Fulham continued to attack with pace. Gunter brilliantly denied Osmand one-on-one with his outstretched foot, before Lemar Gordon crashed an unstoppable shot against the underside of the crossbar.

The last opportunity fell to us as substitute Yusuf Akhamrich dragged a shot fractionally wide of the far post right at the end of stoppage time. Nevertheless, it was a great night's work as we clocked up 46 points to go clear at the top with one game still to play, thus securing a favourable position in the ensuing play-offs.

Reaction on SPURSPLAY

'We've still got work to do'

Under-21s Coach Wayne reflected afterwards on SPURSPLAY: "I thought our performance was very good tonight, I'm really pleased. It's really nice to finish top, but we know we haven't won anything yet - we've still got games to play and we've still got work to do, we go into a knockout phase now and hopefully we can continue our form and get some more results that the way we have performed would warrant.

"I thought we played very well tonight, created a number of chances and we're probably a little bit disappointed that we didn't get one or two more goals. We played against a very good Fulham side who had a few chances as well, but overall I felt we were very good."

On Lankshear topping the scoring charts in the league phase of the season, Wayne added: "He's done very, very well, it's a brilliant personal accolade and I'm really pleased for him. He'll be disappointed that he didn't score one or two more goals tonight, but he's worked tirelessly, he loves scoring goals, he has an obsession for scoring goals and he gets disappointed when he doesn't score. That's a trait that can be a useful one sometimes so I'm really pleased for him on a personal level."

Match data

Goals: Spurs - Lankshear 13, 79.

Yellow cards: Fulham - McAvoy 20; Spurs - Lankshear 33, Santiago 43, Hall 66.

Referee: Gary Parsons.

Venue: Motspur Park.

Weather: Dry, mild, partly cloudy, nine degrees.