Football justice is emphatically not of this world. A goal down, when, as the Tottenham manager Juande Ramos believed, it could have been three, in the concluding minutes Sunderland were bombarding Tottenham’s goal. Radek Cerny, who has replaced the erratic Paul Robinson, made two dramatic saves from drives by Daryl Murphy and Liam Miller. Then Cerny’s long kick in stoppage time sailed over a bemused Sunderland defence, enabling Robbie Keane, who had come on as a substitute, to score Tottenham’s second goal and his 100th for the club, thanks in no small degree to a hapless blunder by the previously commanding Sunderland goalkeeper, the £9m Scottish international Craig Gordon.

“I’m sure,” said a wry Roy Keane, the Sunderland manager, “Robbie will be thanking our defender for giving him a good opportunity, and he shouldn’t have scored.”

Keane, indeed, could make no excuses. His team had given away two sloppy goals and they couldn’t afford to concede so easily, as early as the second minute. On Sunderland’s right, Paul McShane, who later so nearly scored for his team, drove the ball against Young-Pyo Lee, Dimitar Berbatov flicked at it. Jamie O’Hara crossed it, and there was Aaron Lennon to score with the greatest of ease.

“The lad’s on his own in the box,” complained Keane. “That’s nothing to do with luck, that’s concentration. Sometimes the biggest challenge of any sportsman is between the ears.”

Though they left out several players, evidently with Tuesday’s Carling Cup semi-final second leg against what will doubtless be an Arsenal reserve team, Spurs dominated in the first half. Quite why they failed to score again before the break was something of a mystery. Sunderland’s central defence in this period was as open as a prairie. Any Spurs ball played down the middle carried serious threat. Tom Huddlestone, properly praised by Ramos for his all-round ability in the unaccustomed role of centre-back, tried a series of long passes. The lively Jermaine Jenas chased one of them successfully but shot just wide of the left-hand post. And when Jermain Defoe, captain for the day, and Lennon set up the usually exact Berbatov, he booted untypically over the top.

Off went Jenas on another run, passing to Defoe, whose lob was turned over at full stretch by Gordon. Another long searching ball from Huddlestone was crisply hit right-footed by Berbatov but Gordon turned it over the bar.

Yet on 43 minutes Sunderland came close to equalising, Getting his head to an in-swinging corner from the right, McShane had beaten Cerny, only for Michael Dawson to clear off the line. Just as they would do again on 82 minutes, to a header by Kenwyne Jones, who was left uneasily alone up front for far too much of the match.

In the second half Tottenham seemed to take their eye off the ball and start thinking about Tuesday. But the fact was that Sunderland, inconsequential before the break, now came crisply and briskly into the game, having much the better of the half territorially.

After an error by Dawson, Murphy, left-footed from the left, shot just over the bar. And it was Murphy’s right-wing free kick, an in-swinger that Jones put into the net, only for it to be given offside.

Tottenham’s attacks in this period were sporadic. When Lennon crossed from the left, Defoe couldn’t get enough power on the ball to trouble Gordon. But on 70 minutes, Huddlestone, potential scorer and creator of goals, put in a curling fee kick from the left that Gordon turned around the post for a corner.

But Sunderland were now ascendant. When on 80 minutes Murphy took one of this corners, Danny Collins came up for a header that Dawson cleared off the line. Two minutes later, a header by Jones was saved with great difficulty by Cerny.

You wondered whether, against all the initial odds, Sunderland would equalise; and it seemed to be a case of when rather than if. On 88 minutes first Murphy, then Miller, drove in those fierce shots, but an inspired Cerny blocked both of them.

At that stage so late in the game 1-0 seemed unfair to Sunderland, for all their first-half struggles. But then, after Cerny’s huge clearance, there was Keane, left with far too much room and time to squeeze the ball between Gordon and the post when it seemed the keeper must prevail.

Ramos praised Cerny for a “magnificent game” and expressed his delight in Keane’s achievements. “A player of recognised quality. A great achievement for him, for Tottenham and for the whole Spurs family,” he said.

A spectacular achievement but hardly a spectacular goal.

Match stats

Star man: Radek Cerny (Tottenham)
Player ratings: Tottenham: Cerny 8, Stalteri 6 (Chimbonda 79min), Dawson 7, Lee 6, Huddlestone 7, Jenas 7, Boateng 6, O’Hara 6 (Tainio 55min, 6), Lennon 6, Berbatov 7, Defoe 6 (Keane 74min)
Sunderland: Gordon 6, Nosworthy 6, McShane 6 (Cole 75min), Collins 6, Evans 6, Whitehead 6, Murphy 7, Miller 6, Yorke 6, Stokes 6 (Chopra 39min, 6), Jones 6
Yellow cards: Tottenham: Lee, Chimbonda
Sunderland: McShane, Chopra
Referee: L Mason
Attendance: 36,070