All unfortunate events have hidden victims. The now infamous beach ball goal awarded against Liverpool had, as its clear casualty, Rafael Benítez’s team. But what about Sunderland? Their fans laughed and they moved up the table, and Benítez did not even ask for the match to be replayed but that ball is, for Steve Bruce, like Edgar Allan Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart.

That silly beach ball is haunting the Sunderland manager. Just as Poe’s heart thumped away under the floorboards driving a murderer to distraction, the red inflatable is bouncing over every football pitch, taunting Bruce, telling him all his luck came in one ludicrous ricochet.

Bruce mentioned that beach ball three times publicly after this defeat and probably many more times under his breath. His side outplayed Tottenham Hotspur. They ran the midfield, they strung together some exceptionally pretty moves. Andy Reid hit the woodwork with a calmly audacious volley, Darren Bent had a penalty saved and in another match Heurelho Gomes might have been sent off for bringing down the former Spurs striker. However, he was cautioned instead and his save from the spot-kick prompted an improvement in his team’s performance. To cap it all, Craig Gordon, the Sunderland goalkeeper, tried and failed to play on with a broken arm.

“We played well against West Ham and got nothing,” Bruce said. “And Manchester United. We played well against Villa in the cup and got knocked out. Since the beach-ball incident, we’ve not had much luck.”

Reid, who caught the eye throughout, agreed with his manager. “There won’t be too many teams who come here and play better football than we did,” said Reid, whose new, improved fitness is because “he’s stopped putting things in his throat”, according to Bruce. “The ’keeper saved a penalty when perhaps he shouldn’t even have been on the pitch.”

However, just as refereeing decisions are supposed to even themselves out over a season, so do supernatural forces. Gomes claimed that Bent dived for the penalty decision and when the Tottenham goalkeeper said, “Maybe when he dived he changed the game”, the Brazilian meant that the visiting team were punished, morally, for the incident because the resultant save put a spring in the step of the home side and deflated the morale of Sunderland. No dive, no heroics.

On the other hand, Spurs had taken an early lead through Robbie Keane. And Gomes watched a tape of Bent’s previous ten penalties and so his save was down to more than divine intervention.

The home crowd enjoyed watching Bent, who had left White Hart Lane under a cloud, fail to punish them — especially because Bent’s form this season must have made them nervous — but Harry Redknapp’s side switched on the moment the manager abandoned his three-pronged attack.

Keane trudged off the pitch as slowly as it is humanly possible to trudge to be replaced by Niko Kranjcar, who was all long-limbed energy and inspired Spurs to their second goal, fired in by Tom Huddlestone.

Redknapp was taken aback by the failure of his three strikers — with Keane playing behind Peter Crouch and Jermain Defoe — to create chances. “I honestly thought those three would rip them apart,” the manager said. “But we didn’t really pass the ball today. It wasn’t because of those three. Wilson [Palacios] never got on the ball, he didn’t look comfortable today. We gave the ball away a lot.”

But it was not Palacios who was sacrificed, but Keane.

“He wasn’t happy, but what’s he supposed to do, run off and say, ‘Well done, Harry,’ ” Redknapp said. “He’s got the hump when he’s subbed, of course he has. You don’t blame him. But the result was right, so it was the right move.”

Tottenham Hotspur (4-3-1-2): H Gomes 8 — V Corluka 4, L King 5 (sub: M Dawson, 60min 5), J Woodgate 5, B Assou-Ekotto 5 — J Jenas 4, T Huddlestone 6, W Palacios 5 — R Keane 6 (sub: N Kranjcar, 63 7) — J Defoe 5, P Crouch 6. Substitutes not used: B Alnwick, A Hutton, G Bale, D Bentley, R Pavlyuchenko. Booked: Gomes. Next: Wigan Athletic (h).

Sunderland (4-1-4-1): C Gordon 6 (sub: M Fulop, 67 5) — P Bardsley 5 (sub: A Ferdinand, 78), P da Silva 5, M Turner 5, G McCartney 5 — A Reid 8 — F Campbell 6, J Henderson 7, K Richardson 6, S Malbranque 6 (sub: D Healy, 77) — D Bent 6. Substitutes not used: N Nosworthy, D Murphy, D Meyler, A Reed. Booked: Turner, Henderson. Next: Arsenal (h).

Referee: K Friend. Attendance: 35,955.