Spurs are playing Manchester United on Saturday in the FA Cup semi-final. The cup we care about… sometimes, don’t care about… often, but that becomes a really big thing when you reach the later stages and there’s a chance you might win it. Like every other domestic cup in Europe, it has been seriously ‘downgraded’ since the introduction of the Champions League which remains the holy grail for clubs, both in terms of prestige and certainly in remuneration. For the FA Cup they give you 50 quid, the champions league is worth 76 million just for a first round playoff match against a bunch of Norwegian fishermen. Or something like that. But Cup matches, however trivialised they become, pick up their own momentum in their latter stages. At the sharp end.

I went to the semi-final last year, when we lost to Chelsea but really, really should have won. Had a wonderful day out with Tory-boy in the Wembley sunshine. Same Wembley as this year but obviously will feel different because we’ve played all our home games there in between. I had lunch with Ledley King. My ‘dream date’. Had a chat with Ossie Ardiles. Ahhhhhh… then we fucking lost.

And really, it hasn’t been that great a week so far, footballing-wise. We lost to Man City last Saturday (in case you missed that), then last night we drew at Brighton. Which bothers me solely because we have a nice little ‘cushion’ against Chelsea and every point dropped erodes that slightly. Today’s ‘cushion’ is tomorrow’s ‘panic!!’ So beating Man United will be a massive boost to our confidence (players’ and, more importantly, fans’).

The good news is that Jose Morinho, the esteemed (in his ‘special’ mind) manager of that famous football club, appears to be going into his usual meltdown. Or ‘doing a Morinho’ as its known. When a manager tells the press all the shit about his players and bemoaning their lack of Morinho-ness. When other (I’m not saying ‘better’) managers would be having quiet conversations with a paternalistic arm round the shoulders of the errant superstars, Jose phones the Sun instead.

Paul Pogba, all 89 million pounds worth of him, is ‘possibly leaving this summer’. Anthony Martial is so unhappy with his lack of play that he wants to go to Juventus. Others are on the ‘unwanted’ list. Its a repeating story. Morinho cleverly unloaded some dead wood when he was at Chelsea. Mo Salah was shown the door, Kevin de Bruyne, Lukaku. All seen by Jose as shit. All now world class superstars, the first 2 the undisputed kings of the league this season. Because Jose only wants Christiano Ronaldo. Someone perfect and unfaltering. He’s not prepared to do the work and actually improve players, the way, f’rinstance, Pochettino has done at Spurs. And all good managers do. Jose doesn’t have the patience. Nor the eye for sublime talent that must have been at least evident in both de Bruyne and Salah. (Never been 100% convinced about Lukaku).

So he is now making every effort to destabilise his team. Before Saturday. Maybe he’s a closet Spurs fan. We shall have to see.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx