The night Bale and Co taught Hearts a harsh lesson at Tynecastle... and Spurs still had a young lad called Harry Kane waiting to play the second leg!

As Tottenham prepare for their latest Tynecastle appearance in Wednesday night’s glamour friendly with Hearts, Andy Webster will cast his mind back to ‘90 minutes of pain’.

He featured in the Gorgie side’s Europa League play-off with Harry Redknapp’s side in 2011 and, while it ultimately proved an education for the Hearts players, in the moment it quickly became a battle to avoid total humiliation.

The hosts found themselves a goal down in the fifth minute of the first leg and trailed 3-0 by the 28th as their visitors ran rampant, adding a fourth and fifth in the second half in a 5-0 thrashing.

Former defender Webster, now academy manager at Hearts, recalls: ‘Yeah, my general thoughts on European football is that you worked so hard the previous season to achieve something significant for the football club and for yourselves as a team, and you want the big games. You want to progress, which is never easy anyway. or you want the household names that people can recognise from the TV.

‘When you get drawn and the tie comes out, you do think: “Brilliant”, but then the actual living and breathing of it on the pitch is totally different.

‘The one thing I can distinctly remember from that evening is that it was tough. Really tough.

‘When you are up against top-level opposition, they make you do stuff that you know you shouldn’t be doing but you still do it anyway.

‘For example, Jermain Defoe drops into a space and you go with him, knowing fine well that somebody is just going to run into the space you’ve left, but you still do it anyway. You think: “I don’t know why I’m doing this, but I am”.

‘So, that night, with the quality they had on the pitch, they blew us away. There are levels in football and they were definitely superior to us that night.’

Even without the sidelined Luka Modric, the Tottenham side included Rafael van der Vaart, who opened the scoring and pulled the strings, Defoe who netted the second, and midfielders Jake Livermore and Aaron Lennon who, along with Gareth Bale, completed the rout. Throw the likes of Niko Kranjcar and Kyle Walker into the mix, and there was quality throughout the line-up.

‘I always enjoyed testing myself against players who are top, top quality,’ says former Scotland, Rangers, Wigan and Coventry defender Webster. ‘We’ve seen the careers those boys have gone on to have — at the highest level.

‘That was always my mindset going into these games. You think you’re all right at football, and you want to see where you’re at, but that night was a humbling experience. You do get lessons from it, but first it’s 90 minutes of pain.

‘Dealing with quality players, even when I was playing in England, I always found they pass the ball where they want to pass the ball, how they want to pass it. It is just levels and a lot of players in that team, at that time, they were top-level English and international players.’

Hearts boss Paulo Sergio, who had only been in the job a couple of weeks, accused his players of showing Spurs too much respect in the aftermath of their first-leg battering. They had stood back and admired their abilities, said the Portuguese, instead of getting close to them.

While Webster does not dispute that there was plenty about Tottenham’s play to appreciate, he does not believe that was an issue on an evening when getting too close to their rivals simply offered the visitors space to pass around them, while standing off gave them the freedom to express themselves.

‘Perception is crucial and that was how Paulo perceived that game but I wouldn’t have said from my side that that was the case,’ says Webster.

‘Obviously, we didn’t perform on the evening, but they did, and overall they just produced the kind of quality we couldn’t cope with and that’s it in a nutshell. It was tough because you can’t be gung-ho against that type of opposition or they will pick the passes that lead to goals. You have to be cautious but, at the same time, try to apply pressure. It’s a fine balancing act.’

Hearts found greater equilibrium and salvaged some pride in the second leg at White Hart Lane a fortnight later.

Despite some trepidation as they travelled south, the players had learned from the initial experience and Redknapp also did them a favour by replacing half a dozen of his established starters with some academy graduates.

There was even a young boy called Harry Kane making his first-team debut at home.

‘As we know now, there was still a lot of quality in that team,’ laughs 2012 Scottish Cup winner Webster, who faced up to a teenage Kane in a 0-0 draw.

‘That was the start of his journey and at that stage you couldn’t quite tell how good he was going to be, but he was talented. He won and took their penalty but Jamie MacDonald made the save.

‘So many of their players have gone on to have unbelievable football careers and, even in that second leg, there were still loads of international players.

‘When I think back to that experience, one of the things about my time at Hearts is that teams stick together and work hard for each other and, when the stuff starts to hit the fan, that galvanises people.

‘As a team, our battling qualities came to the fore and, while it was still tough, that 0-0 meant we did come away with some kind of moral victory. Gordon Smith hit the bar as well so we could have sneaked the win. But I think we redeemed ourselves ever so slightly in that second leg.’

When the teams meet again in Edinburgh this evening, this time with Ange Postecoglou at the helm for Spurs and Steven Naismith in charge of Hearts, there will be no Europa League group stage on the line.

A friendly it may be, but Webster — who is responsible for cultivating future stars at Tynecastle — believes there will be opportunities for players to impress ahead of the new season.

He joined the club as an 18-year-old, and proved that he was able to swim when he was chucked in at the deep end.

Looking at the kids coming through the academy now, he is enthusiastic about the chances they will be afforded and their ability to grasp them.

As the club prepare to fight on several fronts, with domestic success targeted alongside European advancement, he knows there will be players desperate to show Naismith they can add to the depth of his first-team squad.

‘Last year we had 25 academy players training with the men’s first-team squad,’ says Webster. ‘That counts as success for the academy, and speaks to the work carried out by my predecessors Roger (Arnold), Frankie (McAvoy) and the work we continue to do. We are in a good place but we can always be better.

‘A club like Hearts needs a strong academy.

‘It’s testament to Steven that he is willing to give academy players the chance, not just when we are 5-0 up or 5-0 down, but when he is looking for someone to change the game.’