It was just like old times, those sepia-tinged, heady days of late-summer 2009, when rubbish teams would traipse up to the Lane and be promptly destroyed, with our heroes requiring nothing beyond second gear. From the outset the only worry last night was that we might fail to turn domination into goals, but merrily this was not to be one of those wretched occasions.

In between various planes and trains back from Morocco I managed to catch yesterday's goings-on at Elland Road, and jolly heartening they were too. One of my brothers, for whom the rigours of parenthood mean that Spurs-watching is less frequently indulged in these days, texted afterwards to note that, as the first full Spurs game he has seen in around a year, he was pleasantly surprised by our performance.

So Manchester City have been allowed to sign Sunderland's Marton Fulop on an emergency loan until the end of the season, due to their goalkeeper crisis. Why?

How is the position that they have got themselves in, any different to our current problems at right back? Like us, City are struggling to fill a role within their team, due to injury and having loaned out players.

Team selection was never really an issue when we were banging them in left, right and centre and the side picked itself, but times are a-changing. While annus horribilis is probably a bit strong, our form since the turn of the year has been worrying, reflected not only by poor results and sloppy performances but now scrutiny of the line-up.

Spooky from the excellent Tottenham Hotspur blog, Dear Mr Levy, has given us some of his time to talk football.

Scott the Red: Who has been your best player this season?

Spooky: The fact that I have to stop and think about this would suggest it's been a jolly good year for us.

In many ways this was a depressingly familiar conclusion. We performed pretty well and with ten minutes to go, a draw looked like a result that we deserved. Then United hit us with a couple of late sucker punches and we end up losing by a rather comprehensive margin.

Those expecting a flowing game of football with plenty of chances, would have been disappointed with the first half, with neither side really threatening.

Well, what can one say? Tottenham bolted out of the gates like a well-oiled thoroughbred on Saturday afternoon. A first-half of complete, exhaustive dominance which, at its most one-sided, left City looking as if they'd stumbled into a warzone in their pyjamas.

As our own Jonathon Hobday wrote in his piece yesterday, Tottenham Hotspur and the FA Cup go hand in hand. Or at least they used to.

For a team that has a rich history in cup competitions and has enjoyed a great deal of recent success in the Carling Cup, we're long overdue an appearance in the FA Cup semi-finals at least, let alone the final itself.

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Life can pass by without anything much out of the ordinary occurring for weeks, sometimes months. Then suddenly, everything seems to happen all at once. Life becomes a jangled mess as you try to cope with a host of things in rapid succession.

The same thing can happen in a football match.

Someone at the club shop turn this week into a double DVD box-set with a snappy name, and pronto. Here at AANP Towers we considered our prognosis of four points from the visits of l'Arse and Chelski to be noble but sadly blinded by optimism. After last weekend's debacle, who on God's green earth ever envisaged a reality that saw us take six points from these two games, and with quite such élan?

So, our recent record at Old Trafford continues to be a grisly chapter in the club's history. Try as we might to wriggle free of those damning statistics, it's one hoodoo that's determined to make itself at home. Twenty-one long years and not a sausage. Not even one of those crinkly little wieners that get squashed into the carpet at the office Christmas party; not even a scrap of the cold, greasy brown casing.

Tomorrow sees the last game of the season at White Hart Lane and it's the first one that's really meant anything, since the season that we don't like to think about, when we just missed out on fourth.

If memory serves me right (and I'm not in the mood to look it up), the last home game of that season was also against Bolton and we won that day.

Today In Spurs History: 3rd May

1972 On this day in 1972, Spurs faced Wolves in the first leg of the UEFA Cup Final. Martin Chivers gave us the lead with a headed goal at Molineux, only for the home side to peg us back to 1-1. Chivers' once again gave us the advantage with a blistering goal from thirty yards out, that saw Tottenham return to White Hart Lane with a 2-1 win.

As end of season games go it wasn't a classic, but we didn't go to White Hart Lane on Saturday to be entertained.

For we are now in the unusual position of being in the results business and though our beloved Tottenham looked nervous against Bolton, what mattered was that we managed to eke out a 1-0 win and kept hold of fourth place.

Was it greedy to want third place? Perhaps. In any case, when Redknapp's players came into the dressing room 2-1 up at Burnley and found out Arsenal were leading 3-0, there was probably a collective foot being taken off the pedal. End result? A meaningless 4-2 defeat. Annoying, yes, as it messed up accumulators up and down the land.

By Ollie Irish

Marseille defender Taye Taiwo appears to be sweet on a move away, either to "fantastic" Tottenham or "very good" Atletico Madrid.

The 25-year-old Nigerian, who played for his country in the 2010 World Cup, is contracted to OM until 2012 but wants out.

Yes, we started off playing incredibly crap. Yes, they took full advantage and yes, they looked much fitter and sharper. However, you can't tell me that the result would have been the same if the match was played on grass.

The modern artificial pitch looks a lot more realistic that the one that Luton used to play on and the ball no longer bounces 10ft into the air when it hits the deck, but it is still discernibly different to a normal pitch.

As if a flight across time-zones was not discombobulating enough, I found myself stepping off the plane to be greeted by the news that Alan Hutton had scored for us, while Jermaine Jenas had put in a decent performance and Robbie Keane had started -all of which left me wondering whether I had flown into a new space-time continuum rather than simply across continents.

A good bourbon. Terminator 2 with surround sound. Scantily clad nubile young women prancing around AANP Towers. Just a selection of some of the finer things in life, which get the juices flowing here at AANP Towers, and to this exalted list can be added an evening kick-off at home to l'Arse.

It looks like tonight it might be us who can use the excuse that it was only our kids that lost if things don't go right.

Due to Arsenal's injuries and inferior squad, it looks as if they'll be naming a few more first team players than they normally would in the Carling Cup. Meanwhile, our own injury list could see us give an opportunity to some untried youngsters.

As a Spurs fan, Tuesday night's performance hurt....a lot! What got to me more, however, was the players, once again, stating that Spurs have closed the gap on Arsenal and we are the better team. Same thing I've heard over and over and over again. Yet, not a peep from the Arsenal players on the matter at hand and it appeared there was no need to.

After two successive defeats we need to bounce back with a win to boost morale before our game with Villa on Saturday and a victory would also give us a great start to our Champions League campaign.

There has been a lot of debate as to whether we should persist with a 4-5-1 or go back to 4-4-2.

First things first – in the sprit of Mark Clattenberg's fairly liberal definition of the term "advantage" I thought it apt to mislead the public by using the phrase "In Defence of Mark Clattenberg" when really there is no such thing. Should anyone look towards me for clarification I shall merely shrug, in an exasperating and ever so slightly arrogant manner, which really clarifies nothing for anyone.

I haven't read any of the papers this weekend so I don't know if the headline I've chosen was used but I'd like to think it was, or at the very least White HART Lane.

When Mincini picked Joe Hart to play instead of Shay Given the writing was on the wall for one of two responses.