No apologies from flops

Tottenham's players today refused to apologise to their fans for the humiliation of last night's FA Cup exit at the hands of 10-man Manchester City.

Kevin Keegan's team produced one of the greatest comebacks in the history of the competition to set-up a fifth-round tie against Manchester United.

Spurs threw away a three-goal interval lead as City hit back to win 4-3 having played the entire second half with 10 men after Joey Barton's dismissal for verbally abusing the referee as the players walked off at half-time.

The White Hart Lane crowd were left stunned by the dramatic turn of events but Spurs players Dean Richards, Ledley King and Gus Poyet were all offered the chance to say sorry afterwards but declined.

King said: "I don't want to talk about it. We are still trying to work out how we lost," Poyet merely walked off muttering 'no', while Richards added: "I am not saying anything."

This is the THIRD time Richards has been in a defence that has let a threegoal lead slip. In an FA Cup fifth-round replay three years ago, he was in the Southampton side that lost to First Division Tranmere. Richards then scored on his Spurs debut as they romped into a three-goal interval lead against Manchester United but lost 5-3.

The closest the fans got to an apology was from a first-team player with only a handful of games under his belt. Johnnie Jackson said: "We just didn't perform in the second half. We know we've let the fans down but it wasn't through lack of effort. Things just went badly wrong for us. It is up to us to perform on Saturday against Portsmouth or they will definitely be on our backs."

Acting manager David Pleat said: "We didn't do well enough for all sorts of reasons. Perhaps at halftime we didn't deserve to be three up on the balance of play, although they were excellent goals.