SPURS' reserve team boss Clive Allen was pleased with his players after they fought back to earn a 3-3 draw with Birmingham last night.

While Allen put faith in the club's youngsters - eight of the 16-man squad were academy players - Birmingham's line up included experienced first teamers Martin Taylor, Colin Doyle, Garry O'Connor, Franck Queudrue, Rafael Schmitz and Daniel De Ridder.

And it looked like being a difficult evening as the Blues raced into a two-goal lead within 13 minutes.

But a spirited fightback, including goals from Alan Hutton, Tomas Pekhart, and Adel Taarabt - all before O'Connor's 62nd minute equaliser for the Blues - left Allen (pictured) a happy man.

"The lads showed a lot of character to come back," he told the club's official website.

"A lot of them had individual battles against players with Premier League experience and came out of it with a lot of credit.

"There are lessons to be learned but at the same time a lot to take from the game that I'm very pleased about."

He added: "I was disappointed with the first 20 minutes because we made it very difficult for ourselves against an experienced side and it looked like that would make it very difficult for us.

"I thought our play after going 2-0 down was positive - we got a great response from the lads, got ourselves back into the game and the confidence flowed back into the team from there.

"We were buoyed by that, managed to level it up and we then took the game to them.

"We deserved to go in front and overall I'm disappointed we haven't won the game after the way we played.

"There are lessons to be learned but at the same time a lot to take from the game that I'm very pleased about."

Spurs' reserves next game is at home to Derby reserves next Wednesday (March 26).