Nice try, Harry, but it's still squeaky-bum time

Matthew Norman
2 Mar 2009

The weekend brought more delight to Manchester United as they secured the season's first domestic trophy, and an equally familiar measure of misery to Tottenham. And then, after all that, came the tiresome irrelevance of the Carling Cup Final.

This game meant so little to United in its own right, let alone compared with Liverpool's loss at Middlesbrough on Saturday which guaranteed them another Premier League title, that showing up at all seemed almost an act of gallantry. As for Spurs, what mattered most to them this weekend, or certainly should have, was that the relegation quicksand was made that nasty bit squelchier by wins for Boro and Blackburn, and Stoke's point at Villa Park.

If yesterday's Wembley encounter belonged in the Venn diagram intersect between total irrelevance and pleasant diversion, the respective performances caught the flavour nicely. United, in whose longer-term interests Wayne Rooney had succumbed to a "virus", tootled along in third gear with half their minds on more glamorous affairs further along the road. Meanwhile, Spurs enjoyed the temporary lifting of pressure enough to play well above themselves (not, I agree, the highest of hurdles).

So well did they recover from a dreadful first 20 minutes, during which they appeared to have more chance of invading the Klingon home world than the United half, and so stoutly did they defend throughout, that they almost deserved to ride their luck to victory.

And they had two gigantic slices of that, first when Cristiano Ronaldo was booked for the novel offence of being tripped in the box by Ledley King (shocking, though, how all the penalty decisions seem to go against United); and then, on the stroke of full time, when the same player rocked Heurelho Gomes' near post with an Exocet.

Yet this game was less about a largely dormant Ronaldo, for all his sporadic eruptions, than opposing winger Aaron Lennon, who was superb down the Tottenham right. What a lethal weapon the lightning monobrow (right) will become if he ever learns to cross one quarter as well as he can skin alive full-backs as gifted as Patrice Evra.

Lennon apart, and with the war between Darren Bent and Roman Pavlyuchenko for the 'Most Grotesque Waste of Money Since Fred The Shed' award reaching new heights of savagery, the credit belonged to an unusually solid Spurs defence for neutralising the chasm in class until the end of extra time.

What followed was so soul-crushingly inevitable that the engraver could safely have done his work before the first penalty. Lottery Schmottery . . . almost invariably the technically superior team wins a shootout, and as the players massed in the centre circle, United took on an ominously Teutonic aspect.

The Spurs lads had a heavy air of England-style resignation, meanwhile, and with excellent reason.

Jamie O'Hara was at least on target, drawing a fine save from Ben Foster but not since Frank Lampard against Portugal in the last World Cup has any penalty taker been as transparently expecting to miss as David Bentley, whose expression suggested Mavis Wilton facing an unleashed panther in the snug of the Rover's Return. Had Foster been struck by a sniper's bullet and airlifted out of Wembley by the Red Cross, he'd still have shot three feet wide.

A minute later Anderson finished it off but when the United players ran to mob him, it wasn't the frenzied, delirious sprint that followed the Champions League Final shootout in Moscow last May. This was the languid trot of men mildly relieved not to have lost but aware of what a trivial role this competition plays in defining a season.

No one had bothered to explain this to poor O'Hara, who sobbed last year because he wasn't on the pitch and wept this year because he was. Someone should have told him that, for the fans of both clubs as well as the two managers, this was a game to watch with mild interest before instantly redirecting the mind to more significant matters ahead.

For Spurs, that means a squeaky-bum relegation encounter at home to rampant Middlesbrough on Wednesday, followed by dangerous trips to Sunderland and Aston Villa before it's back to White Hart Lane to entertain, Gawd help us, resurgent Chelsea. If this vastly improved display is any kind of indicator, all will soon be well. But that's exactly what we said 12 months ago after that tremendous Afterthought Cup win over the Blues, and the only direction in which it pointed, it soon transpired, was vertically south in a corkscrew spin.