The first thing I did when I got home at 2am this morning after Sutton’s brave performance against Arsenal last night was to watch a recording of it all over again.

It was such a magical day, which began for me at 7am, and yet it whizzed by so fast it felt like I missed things.

What I can’t forget is the wonderful behaviour of everyone at Arsenal and a great chat I had with manager Arsene Wenger in the away dressing room after the match.

We spent two minutes talking about the game, football and I must admit I found him to be a perfect gentleman.

He knew what it was like to be in small changing rooms from his time working in France many years ago.

But it was during our chat that I was given the impression that he brought on Alexis Sanchez late on in the tie because he knew what it would mean to us and all the fans that were watching.

I know the decision to bring him on surprised a few, but I thought it was a real touch of class.

I was sitting up in the stands at the time and our manager Paul Doswell came out of the dug-out, looked at me and pointed at Sanchez coming on. The look on his face said it all.

Before the game, Arsenal’s directors, the chairman and CEO [Ivan Gazidis] all came for a pre-match meal. We had a separate room for them. I told them this was the calmest place in the whole of the ground, so they were cocooned in a nice quiet atmosphere.

Then they came up to the boardroom and their chairman [Sir Chips Keswick] presented me with a wonderful memento. It was a silver canon, obviously to represent the Gunners, and on it was inscribed “presented to Sutton United from the directors of Arsenal” with the date written on it. It was in a wonderful Arsenal presentation box — it was a lovely gesture.

After the game, I think Theo Walcott and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain came in to the home dressing room and signed some shirts for the boys.

It was a crazy experience all in all. At 4pm the car park was already full and loads of people were already around to get into the bars and buying programmes.

Normally for a midweek game, everyone turns up at six o’clock and it’s all fairly relaxed.

I was going from one room to another and it was manic.

It was so busy you couldn’t get anywhere. I went to go and query something in the ticket office and I couldn’t get anywhere near it and it was only right outside the door.

But now we have to return back to the real world starting with an away game at Torquay on Saturday.

Staying up in the National League is now the priority [Sutton are three points clear of the relegation zone] and manager Paul Doswell will make sure the players understand that a line has been drawn under all of this. They will be back in training on Thursday.

It’s a tough old league and every point is hard fought. It would certainly detract from the Cup run if we go from becoming a wealthy non-League club in the Cup to be relegated. We don’t want that tag.