James Maddison’s quick feet set up Djed Spence to fire in his first league goal via a deflection off Luke Woolfenden to make the game safe after 77 minutes, and Dejan Kulusevski bent in a fourth seven minutes later.
As it turned out, while this probably was a useful runout in terms of getting more minutes in the legs of a number of returning players, and while the value of any win should never be underestimated, it was not a game to say much more about the Tottenham project other than that it remains wildly variegated: very good in some parts and very bad in others.
Not only did Ipswich suffer a fourth successive home defeat in a game that never felt as one-sided as the scoreline ultimately suggested but fourth-bottom Wolves inflicted on Bournemouth only their second defeat in 16.
That could, in another context, be pleasantly relaxing, if only this weren’t football, where having nothing riding on the final third of the season is, for a team of Tottenham’s aspirations, indicative of extreme underachievement.
For five minutes there was only one team in it as Liam Delap repeatedly charged at Archie Gray and made him look every inch the gifted midfielder gamely filling in at centre-back.
