About quarter past eight this evening I was dreaming of what could have been. I had just seen Spurs throw away a two leagued qualifying tie for entry in to the group stages of the Champion's League. In the preceding thirty minutes I had witnessed the Young Boys of Bern score three goals past Spurs and were looking like scoring a fourth. This is not what was supposed to have happened... how did we arrive at this point?

I was not so confident in the build up to this game that we would waltz though these ties with ease - after all I knew that they had beaten Fenerbahçe in the previous round to arrive at this stage. But I had witnessed a promising start to the season against Manchester City on Saturday, picking up where we left off last season. I was hoping that we would build upon that performance with some more assured finishing. Within minutes, that ambition had been shattered as they scored an early goal, somewhat fortuitously. It seems that the players heads dropped instantly - players couldn't pick out teammates with passes, we couldn't maintain any kind of possession, let alone craft an opportunity at goal. After that a second came soon enough and we seemed to regress further until the game seemed over when Young Boys scored a third goal. 

I'm not going to sit here and try overanalyse the game by second guessing the team selection, or the unfamiliarity of playing on an artificial pitch. Whatever way you cut it, it was one of the worst forty minutes I have seen the team play, and also of being a Spurs supporter. When that third goal went it, my heart (and stomach) sank with the realisation that the tie could be over. And without being overly dramatic, although I will anyway, I imagine it would be akin to climbing Everest only to have to turn back 100 meters from the summit as you didn't pack enough oxygen. As in, it was your own doing and not the elements conspiring against you. 

To be fair to 'Arry (which I am rarely prone to doing), taking off Benoît Assou-Ekotto (henceforth known as BAE) and bringing Huddlestone was a good substitution as it gave us more time on the ball in midfield, and with that our passing game seemingly started to return. We were rewarded with a goal before halftime from Bassong (although that probably was not enough to atone for a shocking individual performance) and it was probably Spurs who didn't want the half to come to a close. The second half was much better although Young Boys had their chances to completely kill off the tie, Pavlychenko scored a cracker (think Ngog against Arsenal at the weekend) to hand us a lifeline for the second leg. Unluckily for him, I suspect Redknapp will put his faith in serial love rat Crouch for the return tie and we'll see a lot more of the one dimensional long ball upfield that we tend to resort to when he is on the pitch. 

p.s. credit to the for the subject line pun must go to my brother: @kam82