The competition had reached the Fourth Round stage where Spurs had been paired against FK Austria Memphis. The first leg took place at White Hart Lane and goals from Steve Archibald and Alan Brazil gave us a 2-0 victory. Fortunately we played a lot better than we had done in the home league game against lowly Stoke City four days earlier when a Mark Falco penalty had given us a slender 1-0 victory.

The Stoke game was, according to the programme for the following home match, "not a performance over which we could enthuse". The UEFA Cup represented Tottenham's only chance of a trophy and that was reflected in the huge difference in the crowds for the Stoke and Austria Memphis games. Only 18,271 bothered to turn up for the league match, whilst the UEFA Cup game attracted a crowd of 34,069.

Two more league games were played before the second leg of the UEFA Cup tie. First up was the customary defeat at Liverpool, 3-1 on this occasion and now 72 years since a Tottenham victory at Anfield.  Gary Stevens scored our goal, putting us 1-0 up after only 90 seconds.  The following Saturday, West Bromwich Albion, fifth from bottom in Division One, took advantage of another poor Spurs display with a 1-0 victory, courtesy of a Cyrille Regis goal. The return UEFA Cup game in Vienna saw Spurs draw 2-2 for a comfortable 4-2 aggregate victory, Alan Brazil scoring early on to give us a 3-0 lead and leaving the home side needing to score at least four times to put us out. Ossie Ardiles netted our second goal.

Three days later we travelled to Coventry and, in view of recent league form, pulled off a somewhat surprising 4-2 victory, Brazil scoring twice, with the others from Graham Roberts and Mike Hazard.  Brazil also missed a penalty !  The following Saturday another White Hart Lane crowd of less than 20,000 witnessed a 1-0 victory over Wolves, the fourth home league game on the trot to feature only one goal.