Hotspur Towers - League Cup 1999

Our Danish midfielder scored the winning goal at the death of the game at Wembley to bring Tottenham’s third triumph in the League Cup at the end of the last century. The man in question was man of the match Allan Neilsen.

Tottenham’s road to Wembley and the Worthington Cup started in September with a two legged tie with Brentford and would end with Tottenham picking up the Worthington Cup and qualifying for Europe.

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The Second Round opened with the first leg away which ended in a 3-2 victory. Our goals coming from Carr, Dominguez (1) and Vega. Eight days later the teams met again at the Lane with the same score line. This time saw Nielsen, Campbell and Armstrong on target.
 
Next up was a trip to Northampton where a crowd of just seven and a half thousand saw us win 3-1. Our marksmen that night were Chris Armstrong with two and Sol Campbell.
 
A tougher trip in the 4th round as we were drawn away again this time to Liverpool. Goals from Steffan Iversen (2), ex-red John Scales and Allan Neilsen brought us a 3-1 win. December and a fifth round tie at home to Manchester United. This time we scored through Chris Armstrong with two more and a David Ginola goal saw us proceed after a 3-1 win. 
 
The semi finals in the New Year and Wimbledon came to White Hart Lane for a goalless first leg, the return was three weeks later and a Steffan Iversen strike was the only goal in the game that sent us to Wembley.

The 21st March saw us meet Leicester City in the final. Justin Edinburgh was sent off just after the hour after being fouled by Robbie Savage. Who when Edinburgh turned on him made the incident look much worse than it was. This was the last sending off before the stadium was rebuilt.

Leicester went close near the end but good work from Vega prevented the goal. Neilsen’s goal came from a Iversen cross in injury time.
 

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In what was a disappointing game, as had been our previous finals in this tournament. Leicester tended to play a defensive minded game with little in the way of attack and the plan was to draw Spurs on and hit them with a rare counter attack. The dreary game actually improved after Edinburgh’s dismissal but still most of the play came from ten man Tottenham. It looked certain that the game would go to extra time and the possibility that Leicester might overcome Spurs through numbers rather than endeavor.
 

Les Ferdinand had the ball in midfield and played it our wide to Iversen. He broke fast and sent in a ball that Keller could only parry out Neilsen charging into the box dived to head home the ball.
 
George Graham had become Tottenham manager the previous September. An unpopular choice. This was due to his playing career being spent largely at Arsenal and he was known as delivering a boring safety first style of play. He did bring some organization to the defence which had been lacking under the previous manager, Christian Gross.

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The Leicester goalie that day was Kasey Keller who would later play for Spurs, while we had Ian Walker in goal who in turn would later play at Leicester.
 
Our team that day was - Ian Walker, Steven Carr, Sol Campbell, Ramon Vega, Justin Edinburgh, Darren Anderton, Steffan Freund, Allen Nielsen, David Ginola, Les Ferdinand and Steffan Iversen.
Andy Sinton replaced David Ginola in the 90th minute. The unused subs were Baardsen (2), Luke Young, Jose Dominguez  and Chris Armstrong.
 
COYS
Keith Harrison.
t- Keith 16024542
f- peter shearman (old non de plume)
 
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Notes -1 - see Connections Portugal.
2 - Connections Norway.
The stories of two of our other successes can be found at
 - Hotspur Towers 29 - 2008
 - Hotspur Towers 40 - 1973