Time for the Magic

I was 11 when Spurs last won the FA Cup. Needless to say, the year ended in a 1. I remember asking my dad whether we’d have to wait until 2001 for the next one. Of course, it seemed ridiculous. 10 years was an eternity. We couldn’t possibly have to wait 10 years for another FA Cup. It’s hard to believe we haven’t won another since then.

There was a time when the FA Cup went hand in hand with Tottenham Hotspur. We’d provided some of the competition’s greatest matches and most memorable moments. It was the thing that marked us out from other clubs, the thing that Tottenham Hotspur was all about. We become the first and only non-league winners back in 1901, achieved the hitherto impossible double in 1961 and retained the cup the following year. Then there was Villa’s winding winner in 1981 and Gazza’s heroics in 1991, free-kick and all. We were the club whose name was synonymous with the greatest domestic cup competition in the world, a cup competition once held in greater regard even than the title.

It seems strange to say, but the FA Cup hasn’t been our competition in the last 21 years. Can it be that long? Can it be two whole decades since Gazza dragged the club from the brink of financial ruin all the way to the Twin Towers with some of the most magical performances the famous old competition has ever seen? The way he single-handedly despatched Oxford Utd, Portsmouth and Notts County, overcame a hernia and went from treatment table to teamsheet in a matter of weeks to destroy Arsenal at Wembley. Then, as if the run had been too good to us, his self-destruction in the final meant the team had to find the reserves to overcome Clough’s Forest. You couldn’t write some of the plots the FA Cup has thrown at us over the years, and Tottenham Hotspur were written into that timeless tapestry of drama and magic. It was the stuff of dreams. It was Ossie’s Dream.

In many ways, the competition was made for us. A team famous for being unpredictable and inconsistent, magical and mercurial, as likely to turn up and take out one of the big names of English football as it was to bomb against one of the minnows. God knows we’ve done both.

The again, what HAS been our competition in the last 21 years? Somewhere in that time, things have changed. The FA Cup winners often used to finish half way down the league, sacrificing the last couple of months of the season to follow their cup dreams. But as the Champions League money rolled in and the best teams got better, the rest of us got left behind. The FA Cup was suddenly the top four’s plaything. When we won our eighth, we had more than any other club. Slowly but surely though, we got caught up. We got caught up by teams who were nowhere near us. From being frontrunners, we don’t look like the FA Cup team anymore. What have we got to show for the 20 years that have passed since our most recent triumph? Four League Cup finals and two wins, but more failures.

We seemed set for another famous FA Cup win in 1995, following the overturning of our points deduction and cup ban. An incredible Rocket-fuelled comeback at the Dell was followed by a famous late win at Anfield. Surely the cup was ours. It had to be. The scene was set. The script was written. Only problem was, we didn’t read it. The semi-final came and we froze. Everton murdered us. That, as we know, hasn’t been the only time. There have been semi-final defeats to Arsenal. As we looked to add the FA Cup to our League Cup win in 1999, defeat to Newcastle came after we’d missed enough chances to win several semi-finals. Paul Durkin’s failure to spot a blatant handball in the Newcastle box was followed by a penalty to our opponents for that same offence. Knocked out by ten tonnes of irony at the end of Alan Shearer’s right boot. A day that seemed destined never to be ours.

Most recently, we were shocked by relegated Portsmouth. Chances came and went, Dawson’s slip gave them the lead, a Crouch goal was wrongly disallowed and a harsh penalty finished us off. Our opponents’ demotion left them with nothing else to lose. Even that had worked against us. Another day that for one reason or another, just wasn’t ours. The FA Cup didn’t want to be good to us anymore.

The less said about last year’s cup run, the better. It’s not that we didn’t take it seriously, not that we played an understrength side. We turned up at Fulham with our first 11 all right. But we only turned up in a physical sense. Self-destructing with two penalties conceded and a sending off in the opening quarter of an hour, we might as well have not turned up.

There’s the key for us – how much do we want it? Of course, we want to win the thing. Everyone does. But can we approach the competition with a mindset that will allow us to do it? No one wants to turn up and lose any game, no matter who they put out, but wanting to win the game is different to possessing the kind of powerful determination and intensity we showed in last year’s Champions League. Our energy and our minds sapped by the travails of our European campaign, we literally didn’t have enough left for every competition. We were poor in the cups and grew lacklustre in the league as our European exertions took their toll. But this season, we don’t have any other cups to worry about. We need to be up for it. And if we are, there’s no reason why we can’t do it. Now’s the time to remind everyone what we’re about, starting with Cheltenham Town. What’s that? The year doesn’t end in a 1? Oh well. Time to create our own omens.