Hooooof!

Good morning and welcome to the reality of the FA Cup. 

I think trying to pull player ratings out of that game would be about productive as teaching Dereck Chisora to use cutlery. 

The stark reality of playing a League 1 side seemed to take a few by shock yesterday. Yes, Stevenage were a bit rough, tough and generally didn’t play like nice boys. And no, you wouldn’t want to take a horse out on that pitch. But this is the FA Cup, mush. Whether you like it or not that Cup and Tottingham’s history are intertwined. Games like that are the very definition of taking the rough with the smooth. 

It’s a traditional English competition where conceivably a gang of part-timers can find themselves playing at Wembley Stadium. Try and get over it. 

Could we have done better? Yes. The game was crying out for 442, Bale and Azza to give us width and for all of our players to have been threatened with immediate execution if they hoofed the ball under any circumstances other than clearing it off their own goal line. 

Maybe Arry thought the best thing to do was to fight fire with fire. It was an insult to Livermore to leave him on so long. Arry clearly thought that the boy would be able to scrap it out with lads closer to his own level. When what was really required was us to raise the tone with some thought and finesse. Alas, we looked more like a side that was desperately missing 3MP.

Kaboul looked good, Rose looked like a man in urgent need of brain transplant. 

Anyhoo, bring ’em back to the Lane and we’ll skin ’em alive. Especially if we can string more than three passes together.