Tottenham's Carling Cup winners came rocketing back to earth after their 4-1 trouncing by Birmingham City.

Spurs boss Juande Ramos refused to blame allowing his players to celebrate the cup win for their lacklustre performance at St Andrews.

He said: "When a team achieves a big victory like we did last week, then they deserve to have a big party to celebrate.

"They had sufficient time after that to have made a full recovery and I am not using that as an excuse for today's result.

"Of course, I am not happy with the performance. No manager could be happy with losing 4-1.

"The game started off with us conceding an early goal which made it difficult for us. The principal problem was our players did not show sufficient attention to the intricacies of the game. That was the problem.

"We had to get a response to that goal but it did not work out for us. It was a very different match to the one against Chelsea and the players were showing less than full concentration.

"The team must not relax and I hope they can show what they are made of later this week in the UEFA Cup against PSV Eindhoven."