Saints fans will take a home tie against Spurs as a good omen should the North London side overcome Middlesbrough in their 3rd round replay to set up a meeting at St Mary's.
The initial thoughts after Saints came out of the hat with either Middlesbrough or Spurs was one of disappointment, most fans would have preferred a game against lesser opposition.
However if it should be Spurs who travel to St Mary's on the weekend between Friday 24 and Monday 27 January it will have some good omens fro the 2002/03 season, the last time Saints reached the final of the competition.
Back then we also beat Tottenham 1-0 at home on New Years Day, that win coming courtesy of a James Beattie goal in the 82nd minute.
We also drew them at home in the FA Cup, albeit in 2003 it was a 3rd round tie coming three days later at St Mary's, this was a rout with goals from Michael Svensson who gave us a half time lead and then Jo Tessem & Anders Svensson sealing the game by the 56th minute and James Beattie completing the scoring in the 80th minute.
Ironically our next opponents after this game were Middlesbrough although this fixture was away.
Another coincidence is that 2003 is the same calendar dates as this year, January 1st was a Wednesday and the 3rd round tie was played on Saturday 4th as was this years.
The coincidences end there though as the FA Cup will change from it's traditional 3 week gap for the 5th round and those ties will be played in the midweek of 4th March with the Final being on 23rd May, 17 years ago we travelled to Cardiff to meet Arsenal n May 17th.
I am sure though that in the 4th round we would much prefer to be playing Middlesbrough, with all respect to the North East side, in the FA Cup most teams will look to firstly get a home draw and then the side they meet to be as low down the leagues as they can get.
Middlesbrough being a Championship side will be no pushover, but I think that we would much rather be playing them than a Spurs side who even though inconsistent this season undoubtedly can raise their game at times.