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Tottenham Hotspur’s
debut Champions League season has been a story of unlikely comebacks
but even the staunchest believer will hold little hope they can recover
from Tuesday’s 4-0 thrashing by Real Madrid.

Way back in August,
Spurs dipped their toe into the Champions League so tentatively, that
within 30 minutes of their qualifying round first-leg match at Young
Boys of Berne, they were 3-0 down.

However, setting
their tone for the competition, they pulled two goals back and then won
the second leg with a convincing 4-0 scoreline.

In the group stage,
things were even more dramatic as they trailed Inter Milan 4-0 at the
San Siro, only for Gareth Bale’s spectacular hat-trick to make it 4-3
and give them the confidence to beat the holders 3-1 back in London.

At the Bernabeu on
Tuesday, the 15th-minute dismissal of Peter Crouch for two wild sliding
tackles made Tottenham’s task near impossible.

And even if they
were to play with 12 men at White Hart Lane next week, another
turnaround looks beyond the realms of possibility.

“You need a miracle
playing here with 10; better teams than us would have struggled,” said
Spurs manager Harry Redknapp after the club’s heaviest European defeat.

“We’ve got a mountain to climb but we’ll give it a go.

“It’s been a great
experience and we still have a game to play at White Hart Lane. It
won’t be tough to lift them -what’s tough is the injuries.”

Spurs have 13
players unavailable, not including Aaron Lennon, whose last-minute
withdrawal through illness on Tuesday did much to disrupt Redknapp’s
carefully designed game plan.

“I’ve got to try to find 11 for Saturday against Stoke City,” Redknapp said.

Spurs’ season,
though likely to live long in the folk memory in the pubs along the
Seven Sisters Road, is in danger of sliding towards an anti-climactic
end.

Learning curve

The Champions
League adventure looks over and, thanks to their poor Premier League
form of recent, the next one will not be coming around for at least
another year.

Since their famous
1-0 win over AC Milan in the San Siro on February 15, Spurs have lost
to Blackpool and drawn with Wolverhampton Wanderers, West Ham United
and Wigan Athletic -hardly the stuff of potential European champions.

They now trail
fourth-placed Chelsea by five points with eight games remaining and
need to pick up their domestic form to hold on to fifth and a place in
the Europa League next season.

Bale, however,
showing the same self-belief and enthusiasm as in his scintillating
wing play this season, has not given up on either front yet.

“We are not going to sit back and take another beating from them in the second leg,” he said after Tuesday’s mauling.

“Hopefully we will win and hopefully that win will be enough.

“We have to pick
ourselves up for the rest of the season. We can still finish fourth or
higher maybe. We have to keep going. We still have the second leg and
the league.

“We are a young team that is learning and I think we can definitely learn from this.”