I shall never drink Carling again!

Too many cliches occur and block my efforts to express the feelings and experience of Sunday's narrow defeat: roller coaster, passion & pride, sick as a parrot.

Suffice to say the boys done good and we're proud of them. Or to use Harry's exact words: 'I'm well pleased with the lads.'

This is all apart from:

a) Pav's free kick (nyet, nyet, I take, I am striker, look.... Chyort voz'mi! I hit big screen)
b) Bentley's penalty. He can put a ball in a skip from a hundred yards for a Rolex (see below) but can he hit a sodding barn door or Ben Foster from 12? The answer is no.

It was actually quite emotional. Most fans stayed to cheer the players when they went up for their medals (compare Chelski fans last year who were heading back to the Bridge before the final whistle blew) and there was none of the churlish 'I didn't care about this mickey mouse cup' attitude that I remember from '82 when Liverpool beat us. At the end of that game we sang 'Stick your milk cup up your arse'. It was a bigger trophy in those days too.

more in hope than expectation

We play Shaktar Doenetsk (not sure of spelling) tonight. Ominously, they were the last team to beat Barcelona about 20 games ago. We are without 9 first teamers. Ulp. On March 1st we play Man Yoo in the Carling Cup final. Our tickets are a few rows forward this year. If we keep getting to the final and our tickets move forward at the same rate, I should actually be able to see the game by 2013. I'll be interested to see the odds before the game. United are pretty unbeatable (by us at least) even when they are playing shite. At the moment they are playing like the whole team has been kitted out with sets of Tiger & Scorer patented 'Billy's Boots'. They may call them Nikes or whatever but there must be some subterfuge going on there.

It's been a while since my eyes glistened with pride in the team's passion and performance. I'll be blubbing like a baby if we do the impossible at Wembley. Just to put me in the mood I thought it was time to revisit a real magic time.

Superstition

I have just read that Juande Ramos: "is reputed to avoid using the telephone on the day of a game, puts his right foot first on to the turf before each match and would have avoided touching or looking at the Carling Cup until it was won or lost at Wembley on Sunday."

I'm glad these things affect the elite as well. My boy has taken to wearing several layers of Spurs shirts in a particular order at each match. Lucky we don't play in the height of summer. He also has a flag that's lucky for goals and one that ensures we win. I had to take that one to Wembley on Sunday and take a picture of it to send to him.

I used to have a lucky scarf that I'd had since I was a boy. In those days you got boys' scarves so this one barely went round my neck. it was moth eaten and had been chewed by my dog and I used to trail it out of the window of the car on the way to a game. One day a couple of seasons ago it worked its way loose and was in some puddle somewhere by the time I'd noticed. Once I got over the trauma of realising that all future defeats would be my sole responsibility, I decided to buy a similar scarf. This one, though, is thicker and hotter. It's a right pain actually but I still have to take it to games.

My girl (why doesn't this surprise me?) had a cup cake on Sunday while watching the match. She rolled and rolled the wrapper in her hand until it resembled a small rabbit dropping. This wasn't deliberate; it was just one of those nervous things you do. Apparently it was down to this 'lucky poo' that we won and this now has to be handled on the occasion of each game.

All the talk in the press about Ramos' genius is a nonsense. So long as no-one phones him and we have poo and scarves and multiple shirts all in the right order, we can't fail to keep on winning.

Ossie's dream + Ricky's goals

We were singing this a lot on Sunday. The Top of the Pops performance resonates of more innocent times.

Glory Glory

Spurs male voice chior at their most tuneful.