Two minutes that defined Lucas Bergvall’s night could come to define Tottenham’s season if it helps send them to Wembley and, whisper it quietly, to a first piece of silverware since 2008.

This Carabao Cup semi-final first leg tie in the balance and into its closing scene, Bergvall — already on a yellow card — somehow escaped a second, despite felling Kostas Tsimikas cynically.

Within 120 sharp seconds, the 18-year-old Swede was brushing home from Dominic Solanke’s lay-off, a cultured winner on a bitterly cold night when Liverpool seemed to freeze in front of goal but Tottenham breathed new life in a cup competition that could just provide Ange Postecoglou and his players with their season lifeline.

That nightmare before Christmas, the 6-3 league defeat to Liverpool which could easily have been 10 will have been front-of-mind for all inside the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium ahead of their reunion. Would it be worse?

As it happens, no. It would be so very different. Courageous performances from Bergvall and Archie Gray, both 18, from Djed Spence, and from debutant goalkeeper Antonin Kinsky will have delighted their manager, while Radu Dragusin made a block on the line and Timo Werner came on and ran bravely at Liverpool.

Liverpool, meanwhile, were made to pay for Mohamed Salah and Cody Gakpo’s wasted chances.

Postecoglou has cut such a defeated, deflated figure in recent weeks, as though not even he believes Tottenham’s extraordinary injury crisis will ever abate.

It felt an age ago by the end, but the footballing gods bestowed upon him their latest cruel twist of fate when, with less than six minutes gone, Rodrigo Bentancur went down awkwardly — face-first — after stretching for an uncontested header.

Eight minutes of treatment from various medical staff (which accounted for much of the 11 minutes of first-half stoppage time) culminated in the Uruguayan leaving the field on a stretcher, wearing a breathing mask and covered in a blanket to escape the north London air of a solitary degree Celsius. A new injury concern was born, and on came Brennan Johnson.

The signing of a new goalkeeper this week was one thing, but for Kinsky to canter immediately into the starting line-up after his Sunday move from Slavia Prague and deliver this assured, this accomplished a performance after just two days of training took real guts.

His sprawling reaction save to push wide from Darwin Nunez’s acrobatic late volley made sure of a first-leg victory that ends what has been a truly miserable four-game winless run.

However jubilant Spurs felt by the end, they will know too that they rode their luck in Bergvall of all men scoring the winner. He should really have been sent off for that foul on Tsimikas, and the Greek left-back was receiving treatment when the Swede rolled home, meaning Tottenham scored against 10 men.

But then those of a fervent Spurs persuasion may be all too keen to offer the reminder that Dominic Solanke’s earlier chalked-off goal — the disallowing of which was broadcasted across the stadium by referee Stuart Attwell as part of a new VAR loudspeaker trial — was an extremely tight decision.

Was there an injustice here? Liverpool certainly felt so. Arne Slot, who said afterwards there was "no debate" that it was a sending off, remonstrated against the decision to keep Bergvall on the pitch. Virgil van Dijk was incandescent when it happened and not much calmer after the final whistle.

Those protestations mattered little to the unmovable fact that Tottenham lead the tie at the halfway stage. "There is still a second act to be played", Slot insisted.