Ange Postecoglou moved another step closer towards securing a trophy in his second season at Spurs.
But only after the Premier League giants were given a huge FA Cup scare by non-league Tamworth, who twice had efforts cleared off the line in the final seconds of normal time. Postcecoglou faced regular chants of “you’re getting sacked in the morning” from home fans at the tiny Lamb Ground throughout the game, as he watched his multi-million pound superstars toiling against the fifth tier part-timers.
And the former Celtic boss was forced to break out the big guns for extra time, calling on skipper Son Heung-min and Dejan Kulusevski to avoid an embarrassing third round exit, finally getting the breakthrough after 100 minutes via an unfortunate Nathan Tskhikuna own goal – before Kulusevski added second and Brennan Johnson pounced on a defensive mistake to make it 3-0.
Speaking to ITV, the Aussie said: “It was a challenging game, but credit to Tamworth they made it hard for us. And with the surface we always needed to stay calm and play our football. But in the end we got the job done. My message was to stay calm and stay persistent, you could see they were tiring a fair bit. You go into every game of football with trepidation knowing that you could slip up because of the challenges. We certainly had some challenges today, but for the most part I felt the boys kept their heads and handled it well.
“It’s very easy to lose your head on a day like this when things aren’t going your way and you realise the consequences. But I thought, for the most part, that we stayed really calm.”
When asked about the swing in performance from beating Liverpool to struggling against the part-timers, Ange sniped back: “I don’t think there was a swing in level of performance. It’s just a game of football. It’s a great leveller, it’s still difficult to score goals. It doesn’t matter who you’re playing against. As far as I’m aware we’re through to the next round and that was the objective of today.”
Speaking on commentary Rangers hero Ally McCoist said: “Those fans can’t be anything other than disappointed after beating Liverpool. I could not see this coming, I’ll nail my colours to the mast. I could not see this coming.” Roy Keane: “We’ve been critical of Spurs, they weren’t at their best, but they got the job done.”