Tottenham Hotspur went top of the Premier League as they edged past Luton Town 1-0 despite playing the second half with 10 men. 

It was a moment of brilliance from James Maddison that decided the match, the midfielder skilfully beating his man down the byline to cross for Micky van de Ven to sidefoot in his first goal for the club since joining in the summer from Wolfsburg.

Spurs had dominated the opening half and had three gilt-edged chances in the opening 10 minutes, but Richarlison (twice) and Pedro Porro failed to score. Then Thomas Kaminski brilliantly tipped round a post a Dejan Kulusevski shot that was destined for the far corner. 

Spurs’ frustration grew as they were needlessly reduced to 10 men when Yves Bissouma, booked for a foul 10 minutes earlier in the match, received a second yellow card for a dive on the stroke of half-time. 

Elijah Adebayo missed a glorious opportunity to put Luton ahead two minutes after half-time, but, similar to Richarlison’s first chance, the forward could not steer the ball in from three yards out. 

That miss proved costly as Spurs went ahead five minutes later from van de Ven, who became Spurs’ 167th different Premier League goalscorer, taking the club ahead of Newcastle United and West Ham United for the highest number of different scorers in the competition. 

Luton continued to create chances, with Jacob Brown sending a free header over from a cross by Alfie Doughty, who then narrowly shot over. 

Spurs have 20 points from their eight matches, their best start to a season since 1960/61, when they won the Double. 

Luton remain 17th with four points.

Club reports

Luton report | Spurs report

What the managers said

Rob Edwards: “Even though [Spurs] went down to ten men, they were well organised. We huffed and puffed, we created a couple of big chances, but we didn’t hit the target and it wasn’t then going to be our day.

“We couldn’t quite find the bit of quality that we needed today.”

Ange Postecoglou: “We started the game really well. I thought it was as good as we have played all year. We created some brilliant chances and probably should have been two, three up.

“The sending off obviously then changes the context of the game, and we had to show a different side of ourselves, but I thought we did that awfully well.”

Match officials

Referee: John Brooks. Assistants: Neil Davies, Steve Meredith. Fourth official: Graham Scott. VAR: Michael Oliver. Assistant VAR: Gary Beswick.