The North London derby at White Hart Lane is as huge a 90 minutes for Martin Jol and Spurs as Estonia away in June is going to be for Steve McClaren and England. The most important thing for Spurs when they face Arsenal on Saturday will be their mental state.

The Tottenham players won’t like admitting as much, but the events at Upton Park on the final day of last season will still be on the mind. And the feeling of coming so close but missing out hasn’t been helped this season, either, with the defeats by Arsenal in the Carling Cup, Chelsea in the FA Cup and Sevilla in the UEFA Cup. But they will have Ledley King back at the heart of their defence and Jermain Defoe fit again to resume alongside Dimitar Berbatov.

A quick remedy would be securing UEFA Cup qualification for next season without going the Intertoto Cup route, and ideally another top-five finish. A win, a draw and a defeat in their last three domestic games since going out of the FA Cup hasn’t been an entirely convincing response to securing that place in Europe again.

Injury ruled Paul Robinson out at Stamford Bridge for the FA Cup quarter-final but he immediately reclaimed his Spurs place from Radek Cerny and was back for the replay. Last summer, Robbo returned from the World Cup with England before the semi-final stages had got under way. And back in Europe, and a goal behind going into the second leg after a penalty the England keeper was harshly judged to have conceded in Spain, Spurs found themselves with an early two-goal deficit to make up last week.

In a similar fashion to Arsenal’s second-half comeback against Spurs in the Carling Cup, the Lilywhites did recover after the break to level the score on the night - but it wasn’t nearly enough. And the moment Berbatov, of all people, had a weak effort comfortably saved with a few minutes to go, the dream of a final in Glasgow was over.

"We hope at least to finish seventh this year," Robbo said this week, before turning his attentions to England’s qualifying campaign."We have made it difficult for ourselves with the results we've had. But we have got ourselves in a situation where we've been away to all the difficult places apart from Russia and everybody has got to come to us.”