Nabil Bentaleb rode an emotional rollercoaster as he followed last week’s gripping Capital One Cup semi-final against Sheffield United from Africa.

As we scrapped it out with the Blades for a place at Wembley, Nabil was on African Cup of Nations duty in Equatorial Guinea with Algeria.

Without a television screening of the our semi-final second leg at Bramall Lane last Wednesday, Nabil followed our fate via his mobile phone as Christian Eriksen’s late equaliser took us to the final against Chelsea on Sunday, March 1.

“I wanted to cry when we went 2-1 down,” said Nabil, who returned to the Training Centre on Tuesday after Algeria’s AFCON exit at the hands of Ivory Coast and is now preparing for the North London derby on Saturday. “The game wasn’t on TV, so I followed it on my phone.

“I saw it was 1-0 and I thought ‘okay, we’ve got this’ but then at 2-1 down, I wanted to cry, seriously.

“I was like a kid looking at the phone and then it came up ‘goal’ but when my phone is locked, it just comes up as an alert across the top. I couldn’t see who had scored!

“My heart was beating but I pressed it and it was us!

“We were all speaking about the possibility of going to Wembley before I went away and now we’re there it’s an amazing feeling.”