PERHAPS the most interesting part of an extraordinary evening at White Hart Lane on Tuesday was the winning manager’s reactions to the five goals his team scored against Arsenal. Given that the goals took Tottenham Hotspur to a first victory for nine years over Arsenal and earned the team a place in a cup final, Juande Ramos might have been expected to show more than a little satisfaction.

Tellingly, the response was measured. True, Ramos clenched his fist and expressed his passionate side when Jermaine Jenas’s early goal put Arsenal on the back foot, but each succeeding goal evoked less and less of a reaction from the manager. At the earliest possible moment in a Carling Cup semi-final against Arsenal, he replaced his top two strikers, Dimitar Berbatov and Robbie Keane, and began his preparation for this afternoon’s FA Cup tie against Manchester United.

On the evening of his first important victory in England, Ramos let it be known he did not leave a very good team in Seville merely to win the Carling Cup. Part of the challenge is for him to convince his players they should be doing far better and, in that respect, the emphatic nature of Tuesday evening’s victory was helpful.

At Spurs’ training centre in Chigwell on Friday morning, assistant manager Gus Poyet was asked about Ramos. “First,” said Poyet, “he does speak English. He is in control of training, in control of the meetings. This is the extra bit, to be in front of the press, and you need that extra bit of English which he does not have right now. But he will be here soon. Everything else, he does like a normal manager. He is a winner.”

That much is clear from Ramos’s record with Seville. And it is easy to understand why a manager with two Uefa Cups under his belt should not get too excited during a Carling Cup victory over Arsenal’s team of mostly young players. But there was much about Spurs on Tuesday that bode well for the future under the Spaniard. It is clear he has made the team leaner, and by working them harder has made them mentally tougher. There was also evidence that his team is taking shape. He celebrated that first goal more than the others because he believed he now had a team that had half a chance of defending a lead. The decision to replace Paul Robinson with Radek Cerny was, in a footballing sense, straightforward but for a new Spanish manager, it took guts to discard a man who has played so many times for England.

Ramos got lucky with Ledley King because he has been desperately susceptible to injury, but he makes such a contribution when he plays. Martin Jol would, most likely, be still in a job if King hadn’t been injured through the first three months of the season. Even under Ramos, what would Spurs be without King?

“Yes, it is a problem,” said Poyet, “because what a difference he makes when he’s on the pitch. When he’s there, the whole team feels differently. It would be fantastic to have him week-in, week-out for 90 minutes, but we’ll have to see.”

Michael Dawson is a very different defender alongside King than he seemed earlier this season when failing to form any kind of partnership with Younes Kaboul. But credit, too, must be given to Ramos for the choice of Teemu Tainio in the midfield anchor role. The Finnish international understands the tactical demands of the position and on Tuesday made it difficult for Arsenal to come through the middle, his positional discipline giving Jenas the licence to get forward in support of Berbatov and Keane.

Poyet talks about Ramos’s belief in simplicity on the pitch and one saw Spurs do things that didn’t happen in the past. One thinks of Aaron Lennon’s excellent pass for Keane to score the third and clinching goal, and Keane returning the compliment by playing the pass early to set up Lennon for his goal. Such goals matter in the context of a match but also in terms of the team-building Ramos is attempting.

This afternoon’s tie offers an even greater test of Spurs under Ramos. “What happened on Tuesday was excellent,” said Poyet, “it was something that we were desperate to do but now it is a different story. In some ways we have to come down, forget it, get back to basics.” From photographs of some of the players celebrating their midweek victory into the early hours, Ramos’s team remains a work in progress.

Whatever the physical toll of the Arsenal game, Spurs players will have gained confidence and will know their attacking game is good enough to trouble any defence, even Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic. Much will depend upon United’s freshness after their week in Dubai. They had to run extraordinarily hard to see off Reading last weekend and though one marvelled at the amount of ground that Ronaldo, for example, covered, there was also the accompanying thought that there surely had to be a more efficient way of beating one of the league’s more modest oppositions.

One thing is certain, Spurs will offer a worthy test. Ramos has not lost a cup game in more than two years. During that time he has won five cups and is in the final of a sixth. He is starting to build something at Spurs and whatever happens today, they will continue to improve. The new ethos at the club was apparent from Poyet’s answer to a question about Robinson not celebrating with his teammates on the pitch after the 5-1 victory. “I think it is a personal thing,” said the assistant manager. “He thought it wasn’t the right moment to be there.”

Starting today, this is a team with bigger fish to fry.

Ramos lifts the gloom

Tottenham boss Juande Ramos hopes to end two gloomy records in five days. Spurs haven’t beaten United in 13 games, but as he ended his club’s 22-match winless run against Arsenal last week, he will hope for a repeat at Old Trafford today.

Aug 2007 Man Utd 1 Spurs 0
Apr 2007 Spurs 0 Man Utd 4
Sept 2006 Man Utd 1 Spurs 0
Apr 2006 Spurs 1 Man Utd 2
Oct 2005 Man Utd 1 Spurs 1
Jan 2005 Man Utd 0 Spurs 0
Sept 2004 Spurs 0 Man Utd 1
Mar 2004 Man Utd 3 Spurs 0
Dec 2003 Spurs 1 Man Utd 2
Apr 2003 Spurs 0 Man Utd 2
Sept 2002 Man Utd 1 Spurs 0
Mar 2002 Man Utd 4 Spurs 0
Sept 2001 Spurs 3 Man Utd 5
May 2001 Spurs 3 Man Utd 1

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