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.

Photo: Action Images

underweststand added 09:48 - Jan 7 Two wins in a month against Spurs would be "real fantasy football" for Saints, and a fate worse than ***** for Jose Mourinho. It seems that many Prem.sides think losing to Saints is the bottom of the barrel, and a second defeat would make "The Special One " a bit less special than he thinks he is. Will he demand yellow cards for "time-wasting ball boys?", or want a VAR check every time Deli Alli " falls over/ dives" in the penalty area.? Whether it's Spurs or Boro' makes little difference because - as they always say - if your name is on the Cup , it won't matter who you get as next opponent, but recalling those 2003 games that Nick quoted - it's about time we " turned them over " again. **INTERESTING NOTE ; Both of the 2003 Spurs games are somewhere on You Tube. FUN.

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Sanguin added 09:59 - Jan 7 Isn't it ironic?
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SanMarco added 11:52 - Jan 7 Same calendar dates... My god we will be losing to Arsenal in Cardiff again for sure. Let's hope Watford win their replay because we will be beating them in the semi, ditto Wolves for the quarters - Are Norwich and Milwall still in? I can't believe it. Does this all mean that I am 17 years younger and still have some hair? PS One of my favourite games that 4-0. I remember Chris Marsden doing a trick where he flicked it over one of their players - demonstrating our complete control over Glenda...

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