The legend is dead. No longer can Spurs fans claim that style counts more than winning. The unbridled joy with which they celebrated an aesthetically challenged performance gave the game away that victory really does matter to them in the end.

Eight years without a trophy has seen to that. It may only be the League Cup which, if George Graham's grand plans come to fruition, will in future years become a depositary for the reserve team, but it could have been the European Cup as far as the club and their supporters were concerned.

Times have changed since the `glory, glory' year of 1961. Then winning a trophy named after a beer would not have been in keeping with a team of style and sophistication. The only public link between players and alcohol was having White and Mackay on the same teamsheet.

But the denizens of White Hart Lane, looking forward to an FA Cup semi-final, too, will not care that the Double this Tottenham side are chasing will never earn it the epithet "legendary". Graham's side are on the foothills, not at the peak.

However, within two years of winning the League Cup with Arsenal, Graham had secured the Championship, too, and Spurs fans are already dreaming.

"I'd like to think it won't take me longer to do the same here," said Graham. "But it might do. You need much bigger squads these days, and they are difficult to build."

The appointment of the former Gunner six months ago was a last desperate attempt by the chairman Alan Sugar to win something. Graham's six trophies in eight years at Arsenal was the attraction.

But even Graham admitted that, on looking around at the players on his arrival, "I didn't expect to win a trophy so quickly But it is fantastic to come back to Wembley and win again. There is a bandwagon rolling and anyone who wants to join is welcome."

The misery of Graham's opposite number Martin O'Neill was compounded by the absence of the defender Frank Sinclair, who was sent home in the morning for a breach of club discipline.

After the game there was also need for O'Neill to console a tearful Tony Cottee, who has never won an major English competition and, being on the wrong side of 30, now perhaps never will.

O'Neill also had praise for David Ginola's man-marker, Robert Ullathorne, but even though the Spurs winger was guarded more closely than the watching Salman Rushdie, he shook off his individual disappointment a lot easier.

"I've been in English football for four years and this is the first thing I've won," said Ginola. "It doesn't matter that I was tightly marked or didn't score. Football is a team game and that is what counts."

It has been Graham's ability to turn Spurs into a team that plays for each other which has seen them born again since Christian. Those dark days of Gross seem so long ago now.