It’s been one of those days today – the sort of day when you just wish things had gone a bit better. It would have been grand to have come away from today’s game with three points – we really need every one open to us now. Instead we had to come away with a single point and in the end we felt grateful for that.

Man City are the team immediately below us in the league and this should have meant we’d beat them at home. Half an hour into the game though, the boot was on the other foot. Man City had scored completely against the run of play. It seems to fall like that for Spurs – some teams get those lucky breaks and we rarely do. So, we went into the half-time team talk with a goal deficit against a side we should have been beating.

This is Michael Brown in the thick of the action just before half time.

Whatever Pleat said to the team during the interval seemed to work to at least buck them up. In the second half we were more fiery and showed greater passion. Eventually we managed an equaliser through Jermain Defoe, one of our gaggle of new signings from West Ham. He’s a nice little player and has been in a barren period until now. Good to see him scoring today, maybe that’ll boost his confidence.

We now stand in 13th position and tomorrow’s game between Everton and Leeds is crucial to our maintaining that position. It’s going to be a close call with both clubs fighting for survival – Leeds are on something of a run at the moment too. For me, a Leeds win would work best – they are too far behind Spurs to overtake us tomorrow and have a woeful goal difference so they will remain in their current position as far as I can see if they win. If, on the other hand, Everton win then they go above us and bounce us down into 14th place.

Somehow we always seem to end up in this position I’m not quite sure why. For all our early season promise we end up struggling for survival – this year we started struggling (hence the early departure of Glenn Hoddle) and, despite a fillip in the mid-season we’re right back down in that melee of scrabblers.

My Chelsea mate was bemoaning his team’s see-saw performances over the years and recounted to me an occasion when Chelsea were fighting for survival in the 2nd Division and just about held on. He’s right in that we have only once in all the years I’ve supported the team been out of the top flight once and that was one of the first seasons I saw the team play….so many years ago.

He made me feel grateful to be in that position. Still, it’d be nice to end the season one year fighting for a European slot – we can dream, can’t we?