| After a break of nearly
three months, the UEFA Cup resumed early in March. The competition had reached the
Fourth Round stage where Spurs had been paired against FK
Austria Memphis. The first leg took place at White Hart
Lane and goals from Steve Archibald and Alan Brazil gave
us a 2-0 victory. Fortunately we played a lot better than
we had done in the home league game against lowly Stoke
City four days earlier when a Mark Falco penalty had
given us a slender 1-0 victory.
The Stoke game was,
according to the programme for the following home match,
"not a performance over which we could
enthuse". The UEFA Cup represented Tottenham's only
chance of a trophy and that was reflected in the huge
difference in the crowds for the Stoke and Austria
Memphis games. Only 18,271 bothered to turn up for the
league match, whilst the UEFA Cup game attracted a crowd
of 34,069.
Two more league games were
played before the second leg of the UEFA Cup tie. First
up was the customary defeat at Liverpool, 3-1 on this
occasion and now 72 years since a Tottenham victory at
Anfield. Gary Stevens scored our goal, putting us 1-0 up
after only 90 seconds. The following Saturday, West
Bromwich Albion, fifth from bottom in Division One, took
advantage of another poor Spurs display with a 1-0
victory, courtesy of a Cyrille Regis goal. The return
UEFA Cup game in Vienna saw Spurs draw 2-2 for a
comfortable 4-2 aggregate victory, Alan Brazil scoring
early on to give us a 3-0 lead and leaving the home side
needing to score at least four times to put us out. Ossie
Ardiles netted our second goal.
Three days later we travelled to Coventry and, in view of recent league form,
pulled off a somewhat surprising 4-2 victory, Brazil
scoring twice, with the others from Graham Roberts and
Mike Hazard. Brazil also missed a penalty! The following
Saturday another White Hart Lane crowd of less than
20,000 witnessed a 1-0 victory over Wolves, the fourth
home league game on the trot to feature only one goal.
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