Redknapp's Euro stars forced to play second fiddle to Roo-know-who

What with an honest-to-goodness big news week kicking up a smokescreen off the pitch and an utterly brilliant face-saving hat-trick from Gareth Bale doing them three very big favours on it, Spurs staggered away from the stinkiest of situations last night with something approaching big doo-doo-eating smiles on their faces.

That they did so was nothing short of outrageous and audacious. But it seems that outrageous audacity is becoming something of a leitmotif for Spurs during this extraordinary European season.

They can keep it up, if they like. It's proving to be quite entertaining.

When generations to come look back through the historical archives, they may not even twig that for very long spells in the San Siro last night, Spurs had their European trousers yanked around their ankles and a large Nerazzurri-coloured ping-pong bat slapped embarrassingly hard against their collective botty-cheeks.

In a scoreline that reads 4-3, the four underplays the superiority of Inter, while the three rather puffs up the quality of Arry's continental adventurers.

Inspired by a fizzling performance from the stripling Brazilian, Coutinho, Rafael Benitez's Inter looked for long stretches of the match like they could have magicked up goals to order, sort of in the same way that Benitez magics up indignant soundbites about Liverpool FC every time someone puts a microphone within two kilometres of his gob.

"It could have been seven, eight, nine nil," said Arry afterwards, referring to the situation at half time on what he fairly accurately described as "another incredible night". And he wasn't being flippant. With Samuel Eto'o in powerful, clinical touch and William Gallas in precisely the opposite kind of nick, Spurs really could have been in abject humiliation territory.

Fortunately it was not 9-0 at half-time. It was merely 4-0, with a man sent off — a bauble to Spurs when they are on the road in this competition. They seem to relish playing at the footballing equivalent of a circus bear: you have to bait it with spiky sticks and foul language before it really starts performing. But let's rewind a bit.

Even if this had been 9-0 to Inter, this result would never, ever have invited serious scrutiny this week. Hell, it would have had to be 29-0 to achieve that. No matter what happened to Spurs in Milan last night, the story that keeps on truckin' will continue to be the sub-Hollyoaks breakup of Manchester United and that money-grubbing twerp with one potato where his brain used to be and another where his face never was.

It's easy to have a pop at ITV, which is why I do it a lot. But last night they, too, succumbed to the curse of Roo-know-who. As their coverage began and the camera panned to their three wise owls — Marcel Desailly, Gareth Southgate and Adrian Chiles — standing on the pitch, you knew what they were all bursting to start jabbering about.

Was it the possibility of Peter Crouch returning to haunt Rafa, the man who sat him on the bench for all but the dying minutes of the 2007 European Cup final? Was it the return of Robbie Keane to Inter, a club where it is almost surreal to think he joined for a hefty £13million? Hell, was it even the implications for the future of English sport under the austerity package announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer just hours previously?

No. Instead of really bothering to fill their three-second slots between advertising breaks with anything much in the way of pre-match analysis of Inter v Spurs, Chiles and his two amigos mainly trotted out a build-up better suited to the game about to kick off over on Sky, where a Rooney-less United laboured to a 1-0 home victory over Bursaspor.

Still, that's football these days. And it's probably lucky for Spurs and Redknapp that, after a brief bit of Bale adoration (Should Arry swap him for Rooney?' Aarrgh!) we'll have descended back into the Roo-hole long before anyone gives a lot of serious analysis to whether it's really Spurs' best policy to start important away matches in the Champions League by shipping three or more goals.

In the brief window we have, I'll venture to say it's not. Although on the other hand, I'm very much enjoying watching it. Roll on the return fixture, at White Hart Lane.