SOCCER:There was a point yesterday when many Manchester United supporters might have been questioning the wisdom of Alex Ferguson taking the team on a 6,000-mile round-trip sunshine break to Saudi Arabia when the truth was that, apart from a couple of hours here and there, the skies in Riyadh were as grey as in Rusholme.

For the opening 35 minutes the Premier League leaders cobbled together a performance that could be described, at best, as a six out of 10. But then Michael Dawson made his first mistake of an erratic afternoon, Carlos Tevez slashed a left-foot shot beyond the bewildered Radek Cerny and a team that had previously looked flat, laboured and insipid, suddenly roused themselves to score two further goals and save Ferguson from having to explain the merits of jetting off, mid-season, because of the club's £1 million gift from the Saudi royal family.

The players, it is fair to say, had regarded the five-day stay in Riyadh with about as much enthusiasm as the average person reserves for clearing out the gutters, and it is easy to guess their mood on the return flight when the pilot informed them they had to divert to Egypt for refuelling.

After three hours on the runway in Cairo, the weary squad did not arrive in Manchester until 8pm on Thursday and then faced another long delay to get their baggage - hardly the best way of preparing for a renascent Tottenham Hotspur side who, in Ferguson's own words, came to Old Trafford "bouncing" on the back of their midweek defeat of Arsenal.

Ferguson could be excused, therefore, for expressing a sense of relief after acknowledging that his side had been well short of their usual standards. "It wasn't a great performance from us," the manager said, and this time there were no long eulogies about Cristiano Ronaldo's two goals or his remarkable goalscoring feats.

"Our front players have been magnificent all season, but I thought they were a bit quiet today." His other complaints ranged from the final ball "not being so good" and the team looking "slack" throughout the majority of the first half.

"I must admit that when the decision was taken to play in Saudi Arabia I had not expected such a tough FA Cup tie against Premier League opposition," Ferguson conceded. "I reckoned the odds were on us drawing a team from lower down the divisions because we had had a run of nine draws against teams from the Premier League."

In other words, United had taken a calculated gamble that very nearly did not come off. "You always have to weigh up very carefully the merits of a trip abroad to play an extra game against asking your players to do too much," Ferguson continued.

"I am, in fact, always very careful about adding to our fixture list but, in this instance, I didn't see a problem. We had a clear week and the fact the tie was moved to the Sunday gave us an extra day."

Nonetheless Ferguson's wish, as expressed in his programme notes, that providing the opponents for Sami Al- Jaber's testimonial in Riyadh would "find us bursting with even more energy" looked optimistic in the extreme when Robbie Keane got behind Rio Ferdinand to turn in Aaron Lennon's cross and reward Spurs for their early superiority.

"The goal woke us up," said Ferguson. "But going in at half-time was a good thing for us because we had things to iron out."

It is a measure of Ferguson's motivational powers that his team gradually turned the game upside down, although it was difficult to disagree with Juande Ramos when he claimed that the score was harsh on Tottenham.

Meanwhile the London side completed the €10.8 million signing of Jonathan Woodgate having reached an agreement on personal terms following lengthy talks with the England centre-half over the weekend. Tottenham also expect to sign the Hertha Berlin left-back Gilberto today.