Jose Mourinho is two wins away from leading Tottenham to its first major trophy since 2008.

Gareth Bale, Ben Davies and Harry Kane scored for Mourinho’s team in a 3-1 win at second-division club Stoke in the English League Cup quarterfinals on Wednesday.

Tottenham joined Manchester City and Brentford — a team from the second-tier Championship — in the semifinals, with the lineup to be completed by the winner of Everton vs. Manchester United later.

Mourinho was brought in by Tottenham last year to end the club’s long trophy drought and the League Cup, which he won with Chelsea — on three occasions — and Manchester United, has always been a title he targets. Each time Mourinho has reached the semifinals, he has gone on to win the competition.

He fielded a strong team at Stoke, which is seventh in the Championship, with Kane playing the full match amid a busy run of games in the Premier League.

Bale glanced in a cross from Harry Winks to give Tottenham the lead in the 22nd minute with his third goal since returning to the club in September for a second spell. The winger didn’t come out for the second half, having looked to be moving uncomfortably as he went off the field for halftime.

Jordan Thompson equalized for Stoke in the 53rd in a rare sight of goal for the hosts following a counterattack but Davies put Tottenham back in front with a fierce low drive from 25 yards (meters).

Kane clinched victory in the 81st by running onto Moussa Sissoko’s pass and smashing a rising shot into the roof of the net.

"It’s a cold, wet and windy Wednesday night at Stoke so it was tough," Winks said, repeating an oft-used cliché about Stoke stretching back to when the club was in the Premier League and hard to beat at home.

“But we applied ourselves well, we were aggressive and ready to compete which made it a lot easier for us ... the mentality of the team was to keep going and keep doing what got us into the lead and thankfully that got us the win."

___

More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/Soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

___

Steve Douglas is at https://twitter.com/sdouglas80