If last week's results had been the other way round things wouldn't now look quite as bad.

Losing two late goals to Manchester City? It happens – just look back to the 3-1 loss to Chelsea last October.

And then proving hard to beat against a side at the bottom of the table? Well, a point at West Ham would be the perfect springboard to go on and beat other teams in trouble.

As it was, however, all the good work against Manchester City was undone at Upton Park last Tuesday night.

And having thrown that game away – and there's no other way of describing it – how do we go about getting the points we need to survive now?

It's universally agreed that the sequence of home games against Stoke, Sunderland and Swansea has to be won - but that's asking an awful lot to grind out victory after victory after victory against sides needing the points themselves.

We probably have to go to Fulham and win – irrespective of all the historical baggage attached to that particular fixture – and will maybe need another victory somewhere to be absolutely sure. Where that's going to come from I don't know.

It's a bizarre season: four points more, which might have come from a draw and a win over West Ham and Cardiff, and we'd be in the top half of the table with a very different outlook for the remainder of the season.

But it's our complete inability to get anything out of the matches which really matter that have you both looking at the one-point margin keeping us out of the bottom three and really fearing for our Premier League future.

So, I have come to terms with our fate a lot earlier than in other campaigns – such as 2004/5.

With hindsight, we were out of our depth that season, but one astute moment of management from Nigel Worthington sparked a late revival which almost saved us.

Following a 4-1 defeat at Arsenal in which many of his side treated the afternoon as a testimonial with a pedestrian performance, the City boss hit out in the EDP a couple of days later.

'Arsenal are a very good side, we all know that, but I don't think the players gave me enough,' he said.

'We've got to help ourselves a little bit and I believe we could have done a lot more on the day.

'The fight wasn't there and we didn't get enough tackles in.'

It almost worked - 13 improbable points from the next six games nearly kept us up.

A similar haul from our next eight games and there would be a lot happier ending this year. Time perhaps for a rousing statement of intent from Team Hughton rather than telling us what a good team Tottenham are or what a fine servant Jermain Defoe has been.