Tottenham could do without a replay with Newport County given their fixture list - but should they prioritise it?

Spurs have Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Juventus coming up

Spurs' best chance of a trophy is the FA Cup (Getty)

Spot the odd one out: Manchester United, Liverpool, Newport County, Arsenal, Juventus.

That is Tottenham Hotspur’s fixture list over the next two and a half weeks, between now and what will be their FA Cup fifth round tie, should they beat the League Two team at Wembley. And that Newport game stands out. Not just because they exist in a different football universe from the other sides. But because it is a game Tottenham never wanted to play.

That week after Spurs’ trip to Anfield should have been empty, giving them time to rest and prepare for the north London derby at Wembley on the Saturday lunchtime. But now they will have to play a ferociously motivated Newport team, playing one of the biggest matches of their recent history. And Mauricio Pochettino will have serious decisions to make about key players – Harry Kane, Dele Alli and Christian Eriksen – with half an eye on Arsenal and Juventus ahead.

It might sound over-anxious to worry about how Tottenham will do at home against a League Two side but the fact is that on Saturday evening they were eight minutes away from going out. Pochettino was furious with his players after, for failing to match the “motivation, desire and fight” of Newport, which was what he had demanded beforehand.

“We can talk at the end about tactical, positional games or shape,” Pochettino said afterwards. “The most important, from the beginning of the game, was to try to show more desire, or the same desire as them, the same motivation. To challenge, to have a winning mentality. Because it’s not an easy game.”

It was an atmosphere and a pitch that would have been unfamiliar to many Spurs players but Pochettino, who grew up playing in the Argentinean league, said it reminded of him of how the game is meant to be. “I enjoyed it a lot,” he said. “For me, sometimes I miss personally this kind of atmosphere and football. Because that is the reality of football, and is how I feel. That is pure passion.”

Pádraig Amond put the home side in front (Getty)

Spurs will not play in a situation like this again anytime soon – there will not be many League Two teams left in the fifth round, if they get there – but Pochettino still wants his players to learn. “We all need to learn, to take the responsibility,” he said. “We need to take the individual responsibility and understand that, in football, we need to show more. If we are clever, we are going to learn. If not, we are going to miss the opportunity to learn.”

Clearly Pochettino expected more from his players at Rodney Parade and he pointed to his he “showed ambition” by choosing “our best players” for this game. Certainly he started with Kane, Eric Dier, Jan Vertongen, Mousa Dembele and Victor Wanyama. “We wanted to go further here, we need to be motivated more,” he said. “And realise that if we want to do something special, we cannot miss the opportunity like today.”

But any search for explanations about why Spurs failed to perform at Newport must surely touch on the fact that Pochettino has made very clear that winning the FA Cup is not a priority for his club, compared to winning the Premier League and the Champions League. He wants Spurs to be a “big team” who wins “big trophies” and the two domestic cup competitions do not come into that. He has even pointed to the example of Wigan Athletic – 2013 FA Cup winners, now in League One – to show that winning the cup does not necessarily set up a team for success.

Which is true enough, but when winning a competition – any competition – is the one thing left to tick off from Pochettino’s time at Tottenham, and with Manchester City running away with the Premier League, you wonder whether this might have become more of a priority this year. But if it has, that message does not seem to have got through to the Spurs players quite yet.