Given Room, Tottenham Runs Toward the Top LONDON - In a sense, England's soccer season and Tottenham Hotspur's rise toward the top of the Premier League are two strands of a nation trying to get back what was once feared lost. Tottenham lies third in the league, on the shoulder of the two Manchester teams that dominate the standings. The Spurs have been playing catch-up for 51 years since their team last won the English title - and playing catch-up for the past five months during which it has played one game less than all the rest. That game, against Everton, was postponed last August when Tottenham was the epicenter of rioting, looting and burning that spread throughout London and the country. Perhaps in shock, maybe because it lacked calm preparation, when Tottenham did start to play, it lost its opening matches. First up was Manchester United. Second came Manchester City. The fighting cocks of Tottenham were stunned by what was happening in the community around them, and were stuffed by the best teams in the league while the club was still recruiting players in the summer transfer market. But since then, Tottenham has become the most in-form team of the league. Since August turned to September, the team has climbed the league with 13 victories, three ties, and just one more loss - and playing with an attacking verve that is as stylish as anything in British soccer this season. On Wednesday, it gets the chance to play that long-postponed home game against Everton. Should Tottenham win, as it is expected to do against a stubborn but mid-table opponent, the London team will be equal on points with Manchester United, and just three points behind Manchester City. And Spurs play City on Jan. 22. In the English idiom, the Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp will plan one game at a time. His forte is to build teams in the trading windows that come twice a season. In the last one that closed on Sept. 1, Tottenham signed three pivotal players - Brad Friedel, the experienced American goalkeeper on a free transfer; Scott Parker, a tigerish midfield ball winner; and Emmanuel Adebayor, a mercurial striker from Togo on loan from Manchester City. Wheeling and dealing to the last moments of trading time is a Tottenham habit, and a Redknapp specialty. However, it was the players that Spurs kept last summer that really define its challenge today. Chelsea wanted Luka Modric, the Croatian midfield artist who is as creative as any man in the Premier League. Modric wanted to go, as many a young man might given that Chelsea has the power, through its Russian owner Roman Abramovich, to double any player's salary at a stroke. But Daniel Levy, the Tottenham chairman who has sold great players in the past, dug in his heels and said if Spurs were to return to European Champions League soccer, it needed to keep its star players. Unusually in this age of commercialized pressures, Modric not only stayed where he was had his contract, but has played his heart out for the team so far this season. He is the player Chelsea wanted, he is a talent Manchester United would break the bank to hire. He is a foreigner who translates perfectly into the cut and thrust of the English game, and does it with both determination and passing imagination that can dissect any defense. Alongside him, just as coveted by the world's richest clubs, Gareth Bale is a winger, or a wing-back, whose speed, tenacity and vision can transform tied games into victories. Add Rafael van der Vaart's sprinkling of Dutch flair, Friedel's reassuring defiance at the back, Parker's bite and Adebayor's ability to conjure goals out of thin air, and you have a collection of top quality performers. What Redknapp gives them, and has always given his teams wherever he has worked, is a copious amount of freedom to use their skills. The coach and manager - in English clubs the role is usually combined in one man - sets out a tactical pattern. Redknapp's pattern is intuitive. He learned his game at West Ham, where Ron Greenwood constructed his sides around Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters. They were three core players in the 1966 World Cup side, the only England team ever to win the world trophy.