Hijacked at Halloween

This was Jason Voorhees thrusting his hand through the driver’s window. This was Leatherface (despite his size, lack of grace and the amount of sheer bloody noise he makes) somehow sneaking onto the back seat without the girl noticing. This was Michael Myers’ prostate, lifeless form suddenly sitting bolt upright. This was the most trite and overused of horror frights that the cinema audience still didn’t see coming, the most lazy and predictable of scripts. This was dominating for 80 minutes and being undone by two untidy late set piece goals. I’ll never cease to be amazed by the ways we find of losing games.

For what it’s now worth, we did the right thing by fielding a mixture of kids and regulars. That mixture, led by Bale and the sparky Falque, did more than enough to win the game against a Norwich side that looked even less happy to be there than we did. Whenever Bale runs amok and we don’t get anything out of a game, you have to ask yourself why. Maybe because, with Jermain needing a rest and Clint not being an out-and-out striker, we don’t have anyone to finish the chances off unless Bale does it himself, which he did when he finally put us ahead. Up to that point, we hadn’t really been troubled. But then…we stopped doing the things that put us in that position of dominance. We decided to hold on, yet again. When we’re winning, I don’t like taking off an attack-minded player and bringing on a defensive-minded player. By its nature, the move starts to change the emphasis and mindset of your team. That was exactly what we did by bringing on Vertonghen and putting him in midfield. We surrendered the initiative. And shortly afterwards, we surrendered two needless set pieces and a pair of goals as ugly as the face that Jason keeps hidden away.

And as your mindset changes, so does the mindset of an opposing team that needs to chase the game. All of their subs made an impact – well done Chrissie Hughton – with the presence alone of Holt, who’s becoming a bit of a bogeyman, enough to ruffle us into conceding. I close my eyes and cover my face like a young Michael Myers whenever we give away a set piece, because they tend to be even more painful than the ones in our favour.

Which brings me nicely to the final twist, the final double-bluff to end the proceedings. A penalty with a minute to go gave us the chance to earn a hugely unwanted – but certainly preferable to an exit – period of extra time, but Clint fluffed it. And so went our chance to enter a pretty harmless-looking last eight. This one’s on a plate for Chelsea or the Gooners, after their now obligatory favourable draw. For us, we need to temper the missed opportunity with the extra bit of space it gives us on an already busy fixture list in the run-up to the new year. But with our inability to defend set pieces and tendency to fade away in games, I’m sure they’ll be a few dodgy sequels before then.