A disputed goal, a sending-off for Stephen Ireland and Jermain Defoe coming off the substitutes’ bench to score a late winner added up to a match that managed to be eventful without threatening to become exciting.

Defoe scored the decider seven minutes from time, barely 60 seconds after Ireland had been shown the red card by Mark Halsey, the referee, for a leaping, two-footed challenge on Lee Young Pyo. It was the latest entry in a catalogue of escapades for Ireland this season that have included a last-minute winner against Reading, two invented funerals for two different living grandmothers and a warning letter from the FA after a goal celebration in which he dropped his shorts to reveal Superman underpants.

“I don’t think we should complain,” Sven-Göran Eriksson, the City manager, said. “We suffer from it, but the player also suffers from it. He will probably not be able to play for three games. He’s young, a very good player and he will be better. He shouldn’t have done it, he did it, and a week ago [Robbie] Keane did something similar and was sent off. They are great players and sometimes adrenalin goes some inches too high.”

For Tottenham it was a welcome third Premier League victory of the season and the first against a team in the top half of the table. Juande Ramos, the head coach, had given warning during the week that the club was in a relegation battle and until Defoe’s winner his team hovered only a single point above the bottom three. “It was essential to get three points today to relieve the pressure,” Ramos said. “But there are still five or six teams within two or three points of the relegation zones, so it’s very important to continue getting as many points as we can out of these games.”

City have still not won away from home in the Premier League since the opening day of the season. A point would have taken them back into the top four, above Liverpool and Portsmouth, but yesterday they lost to a team in the bottom half of the table for the first time. “I don’t like the result at all, but it was one of the better away games we’ve played,” Eriksson said. “I liked the performance; we were brave and we tried to win.”

Just when a poor first half seemed to have petered out, Tottenham took the lead with a goal about which City were entitled to feel aggrieved on three counts. Dimitar Berbatov was wrongly awarded a free kick when he went down dramatically under a fair challenge from Gelson Fernandes on the left. Jermaine Jenas rolled the ball low to Berbatov, whose backheeled effort on goal was knocked past Andreas Isaksson, the City goalkeeper, by the hand of Pascal Chimbonda, who was offside.

“The reaction of my players was very strong, but it was hard for the referee to see,” Eriksson said. “Referees in this country are honest and try to do their best. If it hadn’t been a goal it would have been better, but I don’t want to start talking about referees.”

But on the hour, the defensive frailties that have allowed Tottenham to keep only two clean sheets in 16 league matches this season, allowed City back into the game. Rolando Bianchi, who had been on the field only three minutes, escaped the attention of Darren Bent to head home Martin Petrov’s corner from the left and Tottenham looked as if they might drop their twentieth and 21st points of the season from winning positions.

The match changed, though, after Ireland’s sending-off. City failed to clear the free kick awarded for the foul and when Steed Malbranque played the ball back in from the left, it rebounded off the foot of the far post for Defoe to blast home off the outstretched leg of Micah Richards.

Defoe could even have made it 3-1 but shot from 20 yards rather than taking it closer to goal and Isaksson parried the ball away. Perhaps, it was suggested to Eriksson, Defoe had a point to prove to the former England head coach who had left him out of the 2006 England World Cup squad? “Well, it’s a little bit late,” Eriksson said. “I don’t think I will have the job again. The situation then, which was a long time ago, was that he didn’t play many games during the year - that was the reason why I took one [Theo Walcott] who almost never played.”

How they rated

Tottenham

4-4-2

P Robinson 5
P Chimbonda 6
Y Kaboul 6
M Dawson 6
Lee Young Pyo 5
A Lennon 4
J Jenas Y 7
D Zokora 6
S Malbranque 5
D Bent 5
D Berbatov 6

Substitute: K-P Boateng 4 (for Lennon, 67min), J Defoe (for Bent, 77), T Tainio (for Berbatov, 90) Not used: R Cerny, J O’Hara

Manchester City

4-5-1

A Isaksson 5
V Corluka 6
R Dunne Y 7
M Richards 6
J Garrido Y 6
K Etuhu 6
M Johnson 6
G Fernandes 7
S Ireland R 7
M Petrov 6
D Vassell 5

Substitutes: R Bianchi 6 (for Etuhu, 57min), Geovanni (for Vassell, 83) Not used: J Hart, Sun Jihai, N Onuoha