Spurs 3 Southend 1

FA Cup 4th Round. This was the second time in five weeks that the Spurs drew a cup tie with my local town Southend. The first was in the Carling Cup on 20th December when Spurs played pretty poorly and only managed to scrape a 1-0 win in extra time when Defoe scored from a cross, which was considered a contentious off-side.

I suppose it's a bit weird travelling up to Tottenham as a home supporter when the opposition is your home town, but for me, there's no compromise as I've been a Spurs fan for 28 years now and will be until the day I die.

Today, Martin Jol changed the team a fair bit, mainly due to our mid-week game against Arsenal in the Carling Cup semi-final which ended 2-2 despite us going 2 up in the first half. This was the debut for new signing Ricardo Rocha playing at centre back.

Considering the hard work we made of beating them last time, you' d think it would spark a more professional performance wouldn't you? Well, although there were moments of good football and steaming runs through the Southend midfield, there were also times when it looked like a circus - not all Tottenham's fault however - the referee Rob Stiles more than contributed and made some bizarre decisions that left the fans all riled up.




In front of a crowd of 33,406 (surprisingly lots of empty seats), Robbie Keane opened the scoring in a first half with a deflected goal that should really have yielded more. Jermaine Jenas marked his return to the side after injury with a goal that was the very least his performance deserved. Freddy Eastwood did halve the deficit for a short time after scoring a penalty - which, from where we were sitting, looked like a bad decision. However, watching the replay on Match of the Day, the ball did come off Ghali's arm. Mido settled the outcome on 75 minutes. The star of the show (and not first the first time) was Aaron Lennon, whose crosse