The FA Cup Final - Live

Well, I've managed to work myself up into a frenzy over this year's FA Cup final, and we're doing it live. Live commentary from the comfort of my living room will start at about 2.45 with a raucous rendition of "Abide With Me" - they still do that, right? The teams will line up as follows:

Portsmouth: James, Johnson, Campbell, Distin, Hreidarsson, Diarra, Muntari, Diop, Kranjcar, Utaka, Kanu.

Cardiff: Enckelman, McNaughton, Loovens, Johnson, Capaldi, Whittingham, Rae, McPhail, Ledley, Parry, Hasselbaink.

No place for Robbie Fowler, by the way. He must still be crocked. Portsmouth, meanwhile have chosen to only play one up front (with Jermaine Defoe cup-tied - bet he's delighted that he played in the Third Round for Spurs, now). I'm supporting Cardiff this afternoon, by the way (though I think that I'll cope if Portsmouth win). More to follow later.

14.45: Over to John Motson. Wembley is absolutely jumping this afternoon. This is so much better than having two sets of supporters. Lesley Garrett, singing "Abide With Me", has got extraordinary cleavage. There'll be a welcome in the valleys, indeed.

14.50: First camera shot of the afternoon of Mr Portsmouth Football Club (see above), too, and he's blubbing during "Abide With Me". Bless.

14.53: The teams are out on the pitch, and are being introduced to Bobby Robson (who, I have to say - and mention with some regret - doesn't look terribly well).

14.58: The national anthems. When I think of "Land Of My Fathers", I always think of "Son Of My Father", by Chicory Tip. Perhaps England should adopt that as their nation anthem. Answers on a postcard for what the words should be.

15.00: Kick-off. In a similar vein, I now have a verbal tic that makes me suggest that Tony Capaldi is the son of the former Traffic drummer, Jim Capaldi, whenever I hear his name mentioned. Dotmund is my able right hand man this afternoon, and is keeping count of the number of times that the 1927 and 1939 Cup Finals are mentioned by John Motson - 3-0 to 1927, so far.

15.05: They're using a special FA Cup final ball this afternoon - quite a nice design, too (I'll see if I can find a picture of it if I get the time). A good, bright start by both teams, by the way. Congratulations, by the way, to the person that found this commentary by searching Google for "lesley garrett cleavage".

15.10: We're listening to "Feelin' Alright" by Traffic, here, out of deference to Tony Capaldi's dad. The Cardiff number two, Kevin McNaughton, is really, really grey - a quick check of Google reveals his date of birth to be the 28th of August, 1982. He's almost exactly 10 years younger than me, and looks almost exactly ten years older.

15.15: Parry suddenly gets through on goal, and David James blocks well. Less than a minute later, Whittingham's shot hits his own player and loops just wide of the goal. Cardiff have been the better of the two teams so far.

15.17: Enckleman makes a dogs breakfast of a cross, and Cardiff bundle the ball clear with Kanu stretching to try and get the ball over the line. Peter Enckleman is completely grey haired, too.

15.23: It's all gone a bit quiet after that, which gave me a moment to dig out the 2008 FA Cup Final ball.

15.24: As if by magic, Kanu gets through and rounds Enckleman, but the angle is too narrow and he hits the post.

15.26: Great chance for Cardiff at the other end, almost straight away - Portsmouth fail to pick up Parry, who has a free shot from twelve yards, but he mishits it and Portsmouth clear.

15.29: Roger Johnson comes up for a free-kick and heads just over for Cardiff. Dotmund, meanwhile, is looking up comedy Dutch footballers' names on Wikipedia. A round of applause, ladies and gentlemen, for Dick Bond and Ron de Roode of Stormvogels Telstar.

15.34: Not a great deal of quality from Portsmouth, except when they're going forward, which hasn't been that often. Hasselbaink crosses low into the penalty area but Portsmouth clear.

15.38: As noted in the comments, Cardiff's biggest problem at the moment is Enckleman, who looks rusty every time the ball goes into their penalty area. Portsmouth are on top at the moment.

15.39: GOAL! Cardiff 0-1 Portsmouth - Muntari crosses low into the six yard box, Enckleman fumbles again and Kanu pushes the ball over the line. There are a few seconds' hesitation because of a suspicion that, well, something might have happened, but it's a perfectly good goal. "Enckleman is making David James look like Gordon Banks at the moment", says Dotmund.

15.45: Coming towards half-time, a quick break for the summary. Cardiff have looked pretty good apart from every time the ball goes anywhere near their goal, although Portsmouth have settled since they scored. As for Peter Enckleman, well... at least he won't be remembered for that goal that he conceded in a Birmingham derby for Aston Villa straight from a throw in any more.

15.47: Cardiff have a goal disallowed for handball - a corner is Encklemanned by David James, and the ball is lobbed in. A fair enough call. Half-time, Cardiff City 0-1 Portsmouth.

16.05: Right, the second half is under way. It's now 3-2 to Cardiff in the "Mentions Of The Last Time they Won The Cup" mini competition going on here, by the way.

16.11: First decent chance of the second half, as Roger Johnson heads into the side netting, though the reverse angle shows a massive deflection, but no corner given.

16.14: At the other end, Krancjar's tidy back-heel releases Muntari, who pulls the ball back, but Kanu's shot is blocked. Krancjar is then booked for booting Whittingham about twelve feet up in the air.

16.18: Muntari shoots over from distance, but Enckleman has it covered. I mean, to the extent to which he can, anyway.

16.22: Ramsey on for Whittingham, for Cardiff. The youngest ever FA Cup finallist, according to Motson, but I will be seeking independent confirmation of this, since every other "fact" that Motson has managed to get every other thing that he has said wrong so far this afternoon.

16.30: Nugent on for Utaka, for Portsmouth. Cardiff are starting to get back into the match, but the second half has been pretty poor, so far.

16.32: Only a couple minutes on the pitch, and Nugent has a shot from a very tight angle which Enckleman pushes wide. I don't think he's caught anything yet this afternoon.

16.36: It looks as if the most likely route to a goal for Cardiff is going to be a set-piece, finished off with a header by Richard Johnson, who has been everywhere this afternoon.

16.39: Papa Bouba Diop comes on for Pedro Mendes, for Portsmouth. Cardiff are raising their game, and the truth is that Portsmouth aren't playing very well. Loovens gets up well from a corner for Cardiff, but the header is down into the ground, and bounces up and over.

16.45: Sylvain Distain carries the ball from the half way line, but is tackled by Johnson at the last minute. Milan Baros (remember him?) comes on for the goal-scorer, Kanu.

16.50: An almighty scramble in the Portsmouth penalty area, but Ramsey can't quite dig the ball out from under his own feet and the ball is eventually blocked. Roger Johnson has taken his shinpads off. How tough.

16.53: Johnson's shot for Cardiff is blocked, and Portsmouth win the FA Cup. A last minute equalizer for 1939 means that the score finishes 3-3 in the battle of the Cup Final Mentions.

FULL TIME: Cardiff City 0-1 Portsmouth - Portsmouth just about shaded this, but it was a disappointing second half performance after they played well in the first half. In the end, they just about had too much, but ultimately Enckleman's mistake is probably what this match will be remembered for. Harry Redknapp, being interviewed after the match, is looking a bit flushed. It is possible that he has an erection. Fair play, I guess, to players like David James, who has been in the game for not far short of 20 years and has won a trophy right at the tail end of the season.

17.05: A late winner for Portsmouth - as the team goes up to get the trophy, Motson mentions that they're doing this for the first time since 1939. 4-3 to Portsmouth. Well done to worthy winners, and good luck in next year's UEFA Cup.

The FA Cup Final 2008

In an age in which football has become almost wearily predictable in many respects, this year's FA Cup has been a breath of fresh air. Whether we're talking about Havant & Waterlooville's demolition of Swansea City and their subsequent day out at Anfield, Barnsley's extraordinary performances against Liverpool and Chelsea and Portsmouth's tin at Old Trafford have been just some of the highlights of a remarkable year's cup football, which culminates tomorrow at Wembley with the unexpected sight of Cardiff City taking on Portsmouth.

A quick scout around this morning's main sport websites gives away the rank hypocrisy of the British sports press, who are quick to laud the underdogs when they knock the big clubs out (presumably because it's what people want to read) but then ignore the main event, presumably because there aren't enough "stars" involved. You' be forgiven for thinking that there is no FA Cup Final this year if you read The Guardian's Sport Blog (though their football site does make a bit more of an effort). The Independent makes a better effort, but the wooden spoon goes to The Times, whose Ten Reasons To Be Fearful is largely insulting and, notably, takes clear precedence over the Ten Reasons To Be Cheerful article that it was a counter to. Why, one wonders, would The Times feel the need to run an article countering an article saying that, you know, having two teams that aren't Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool or Arsenal in the FA Cup Final might just make a nice change? I look forward to their Ten Reasons Why An All-English Champions League Final Is Bad For European Football.

Of course, if tomorrow's match turns out to be a disappointing spectacle (as any football match has the potential to be), numerous commentators will crawl out of the woodwork telling us that Cardiff and Portsmouth being there in the first place is A Bad Thing For Football - something which I don't particularly remember being bestowed upon Chelsea and Manchester United after they served up the worst FA Cup Final in living memory last year. There will also doubtless be opinions served up that the FA Cup is an irrelevance in the twenty-first century, with statistics comparing the television viewing figures between it and the Champion League Final as evidence, as if the number of people sat on their sofas watching it is the only thing that matters. This year, the FA Cup Final isn't really about you and I, sitting at home on our sofas, drinking beer from a can and occasionally scratching our backsides. More than any other Cup Final in recent years, this year's is about the people that are there in the day, and I would wager that they couldn't care less whether two million or two hundred million people are watching at home.

This year's FA Cup Final is a celebration, all too rare these days, of the diversity of English football. It is living proof of the biggest strength that our domestic game has - the ability to throw up a match between two totally unexpected teams in completely unexpected circumstances. Like most of the rest of us, I had lost the faith that this could ever happen again, and it may never happen again after this year. Just think, though, how terrible tomorrow would have been had it been Chelsea against Manchester United again, with half of the key players being rested ahead of Wednesday night's trip to Moscow. To add to the retro feeling in the build-up to tomorrow, Cardiff City have even released a borderline terrible Cup Final single, which has unexpectedly broken into the top twenty. I mean, "I'm sure we will prevail, give the cup to Steve McPhail". It's small pleasures like this that are, I'm convinced, the key to a long and happy life.

Bluebirds Into Europe?

It was always likely to cause something of a shit storm, and now it's likely to get completely out of hand. All of this is happening, as well, whilst the likelihood of it even mattering is still arguably less than fifty per cent. The fact of the matter is that Cardiff City will start the 2008 FA Cup Final as underdogs, but the small issue of whether they should be allowed to enter the UEFA Cup next season is already threatening to completely overshadow the match itself, which conveniently overlooks the fact that they have still got to beat Portsmouth in order for it to become a reality.

To the casual observer, it may seem pretty obvious. The winners of the FA Cup should play in the following season's UEFA Cup. Cardiff City, although Welsh, play within the English league system and enter the English cup competitions, so why should they not be allowed to take what would appear to be an automatic right? The answer, you'll probably be unsurprised to hear, is administration. Although Cardiff City (along with Swansea City, Wrexham, Newport County, Merthyr Tydfil and Colwyn Bay) are fully paid-up members of the English league system, their registration lies with the Football Association of Wales, and UEFA rules state that clubs can only qualify to play in the European competition of their country of affiliation. The decision of the FAW to start (what is now known as) the FAW Premiership in 1992 caused a considerable amount of bad blood within Welsh football. The FAW initially rail-roaded all Welsh non-league clubs into it, but eight of them (the "Irate Eight") opted not to join. The FAW banned them playing in Wales, leading to the ridiculous situation of eight Welsh clubs playing over the border in England until three years later, when a court ruling allowed them back. By this time, five of the clubs had conceded and joined the Welsh league, while the other three plod gamely on, below the Conference.

Against this sort of a background, it's not difficult to see why such a commotion has begun. The Welsh places for the European competitions go to Welsh Premier League sides, but the Welsh sides that play in Europe are left in a theoretical limbo, although it was a limbo that, largely due to their mediocre performances on the pitch, no-one had paid any attention to until now. One suspects that Alun Evans, the chair of the FAW, still harbours the belief that Cardiff, Swansea and Wrexham (who were never petitioned to join the Welsh Premiership in 1992) should be members of it rather that members of the English system. He has certainly made public comments about his desire to have their reserve teams play in the Welsh Premier League (including in his recent work of Communist Manifesto-esque importance, 'FAW Strategic Plan 2007-2012') , though it strikes me that this would be pretty demeaning to the league itself.

Over the last couple of weeks, though, a storm has been brewing. First up, UEFA weighed in, with Michel Platini (who is, in theory, a supporter of the smaller clubs in Europe) stated that he hoped that Cardiff would be able to compete in the UEFA Cup next season, and the FA confirmed that they would be happy for them to compete as England's representatives in it should they beat Portsmouth next month. The FA seem to be doing what they can to be accommodating towards Cardiff, having also confirmed (after some complaints about them playing "God Save The Queen") that they would also play "The Land Of My Fathers" before the kick-off at Wembley. The FAW, however, seem to be taking this all as a sleight on their authority as a football association. The FAW is, ultimately, powerless, and the Cardiff chairman Peter Ridsdale has gone public in stating that he will, if required, resign Cardiff from the FAW and register them in England instead.

It seems to me that the FAW's attitude is coming across as small-minded, and Cardiff are right to be concerned - their supporters might not be too bothered about the UEFA Cup, but what if they were to follow this up by getting into the Premier League and (suspend your disbelief for a moment here) qualify for the Champions League? There would be rather more at stake then, and they would have set a precedent which ends their hopes of something that could be very important indeed. A successful run in the UEFA Cup for Cardiff might just, regardless of who is registered to who, ignite a bit of interest in Welsh football, and this could be seen in many different ways, from the national team (and the number of empty seats at many of their recent home matches has been notable) down to the Welsh Premier League, where money is always tight. Frankly, when Alun Evans says this: "But in administrative terms and in terms of the credibility of Welsh football on an international basis then I don't think the argument for their entrance into Europe can be sustained", he's not making very much sense. One gets the feeling, however, that it doesn't really matter very much what he thinks.

The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Striker

Will there be a more poignant image taken this season than this one of Barnsley's Kayode Odejayi? With twenty minutes played in the second half of this afternoon's FA Cup semi-final between Barnsley and Cardiff City, he was put through on goal with a glorious chance to level things up. One can only imagine what went through his mind in those ten seconds. I'd be less than surprised if his entire life flashed before his eyes. It's likely that he had too much time. His shot flashed wide of the post, and with that miss went Barnsley's chance of making it to their first FA Cup final since 1912.

Prior to this, Cardiff's lead had seemed like a somewhat fortunate. Barnsley had reacted excellently to Joe Ledley's early goal for Cardiff, and had looked plenty capable of being able to drag themselves back into the match. Odejayi's miss, however, proved to be as good as it got for them. They continued to press forward for an equalizer, but left significant gaps at the back, and in the last ten minutes Cardiff looked more likely to double their lead than Barnsley looked like levelling things up.

A harsh reality now faces them. Having lost this match, their attention will now turn back to their battle against relegation from the Championship, where results over the weekend dropped them into the bottom three. For Kayode Odejayi, who gave the FA Cup one of its defining moments of the season when he out-jumped Petr Cech to head Chelsea out of the competition last month, there have been a series of rather unsavoury comments after it became public that Barnsley may not be renewing his contract. We may never know the exact extent to which this popped into Odejayi's head as he closed in on Peter Enckleman's goal, but his reaction to the final whistle (which was linger over for considerably too long by the Sky Sports cameras) indicated that he somehow knew that finding a new contract might prove to be more difficult to find than he was hoping it was.

Congratulations, then should go to Cardiff City, whose enormous support at Wembley thoroughly deserved a return trip there next month. They still have half a chance of making the play-offs for a place in the Premier League, and it will be interesting to see whether the diversion of an FA Cup final will propel them up the table on a sea of newly-found confidence, or whether it will prove to be a distraction from the business of hauling themselves up the table. Cardiff have flirted with the idea of entering into administration a couple of times over the last couple of seasons, and could do with the £50m that a year in the Premier League could net them, but I suspect that human nature might just overtake the need for extra cash.

It is somewhat ironic that the competition that has provided so many surprises should suddenly run dry at the semi-final stage, but Portsmouth tried their level best to help to cause one by playing absolutely terribly against West Bromwich Albion yesterday lunchtime. They scored the only goal of that match when Dean Kiely and Zoltan Gera got their knickers in a twist after Kiely blocked a shot, and Kanu nipped in to put the ball in from six yards. Portsmouth had been the second-best team before this, and continued to be afterwards, but West Bromwich Albion must have known that it wasn't going to be their day when Robert Koren hit the crossbar from twenty yards out and Ishmael Miller shot narrowly wide when he should have at least hit the target.

So, Cardiff City vs Portsmouth. The 2008 FA Cup Final. I don't think that any of us were expecting that.

It Was Forty Years Ago Today

Well, it wasn't exactly forty years ago today, but it was forty years ago West Bromwich Albion, the last of our four FA Cup survivors, last won the Cup. They stand alone amongst the four clubs left in this year's competition as being the only club to have won the competition more than once, but you'd have to be considerably older than I am in order to be able to remember it. In fact, Albion have won the FA Cup five times - twice in the nineteenth century and then again in 1931 and 1954, but it is their last win, in 1968, that their supporters regard as the iconic one. It was a run that nearly ended before it started. They needed a penalty to earn a draw against Colchester United in the Third Round, and another replay in the Fourth Round against Southampton. They then knocked Portsmouth out in the Fifth Round (meaning that both Portsmouth and West Bromwich Albion have beaten each other on the way to winning the FA Cup), and then finally saw Liverpool off after two replays in the quarter-finals. The semi-final was a proper internecine affair against Birmingham City at Villa Park. Albion started the match as favourites and won 2-0.

Their opponents at Wembley were Everton, and there wasn't much on paper between the two sides. Everton had finished the season in fifth place in the First Division (which had been won by Manchester City, of all people), while the Albion had finished eighth. The year before, Albion had lost in the League Cup final to Third Division Queens Park Rangers after having led 2-0 at half-time.Whilst Albion had Jeff Astle and Tony Brown, Everton had Brian Labone and Ron Springett. It was a match for firsts - the first match to be covered in colour by the BBC and the first FA Cup final in which a substitute (Dennis Clarke for West Bromwich Albion - substitutes had only been introduced in 1965 and were still only very seldom used for tactical reasons) - but, in truth, it was a poor match and finished 0-0, and looking likely to go to a replay for the first time since in had been played at Wembley. Three minutes into extra time, however, Jeff Astle thrashed the ball in from the edge of the penalty area for the only goal of the match, and it was the sort of match in which Everton didn't have anything left to give.

West Bromwich Albion are one of those clubs that are very good at false dawns. If told anyone in 1968 that a club from the Midlands would be winning the league championship in four years' time, Albion would have been most people's choices. Aston Villa were in a decline that would see them in the Third Division by 1971, Wolves had only just been promoted back to the First Division and Derby County (who would be fashioned by Brian Clough into League Champions into League Champions by 1972) had just finished fifth from bottom in the Second Division. Albion would go on to the European Cup Winners Cup quarter-finals the following season and then lost the 1970 League Cup final to Manchester City. The purple patch ended, however, with the departure of Alan Ashman in 1971, and they were relegated two years later. Jeff Astle sadly dies in 2002 at the age of 59.

As with the other three contenders, this weekend's matches are uncharted territory for West Bromwich Albion, and what I've noticed over the last seven days is that those that had been talking of the Cup as a hindrance to their promotion aspirations have largely fallen silent. The fact of the matter is that even if they don't get promoted this season, they'll be there or thereabouts next season, and (I'll say this yet again) this is the best chance that West Bromwich Albion could possibly have to win the FA Cup. It promises to be a magnificent weekend of football.

Pompey Play Up

There are a couple of clubs for whom 2007/08 could turn out to to be the perfect season. For supporters of, say, Hull City, promotion to the Premier League coupled with a failure on the part of Leeds United to get back into League One could be regarded as everything that their supporters have ever dreamed of. If there is one club, however, that is looking at having a once in a lifetime, best ever season, it's Portsmouth, whose supporters could be celebrating an unprecedented double, come the end of May - winning the FA Cup for the first time in almost seventy years, coupled with their bitter rivals Southampton being relegated from the Championship. The prospect of European football coming to Fratton Park for the first time whilst Southampton have to spend at least one season playing against the likes of Cheltenham Town and Peterborough United must cause a small bead of drool to form in the corner of their mouths.

Portsmouth's involvement in this weekend's FA Cup semi-finals adds to the "retro" air hanging over this year's competition. Although they have managed to establish themselves as a Premier League club that looks capable of booking a European place on league position alone under what has turned out to be the surprisingly astute managership of Harry Redknapp, their cup record over the last fifty years or so has been pretty terrible. Their only FA Cup win came in 1939, and led to one of them becoming one of those standard pub quiz answers - the football programme was halted at the outbreak of war, meaning that Portsmouth would hold onto the Cup for seven years, until Derby County beat Charlton Athletic in the 1946 final. They had been promoted into the First Division in 1927, and had made two previous FA Cup Finals, losing to Bolton Wanderers in 1927 and to Manchester City in 1934. On the pitch, the 1938/39 season had been a disappointing one - they finished the season in seventeenth place in the twenty-two club First Division table, four points above the relegation places. Their FA Cup run provided a welcome distraction. The draw seemed to favour them, as they saw off Lincoln City of Division Three North, followed by West Bromwich Albion and West Ham United of Division Two. In the quarter-finals, over 44,000 saw them surprise mid-table Preston North End, before they beat fellow First Division strugglers Huddersfield Town 2-1 at Highbury in the semi-finals.

To say that they were expected to lose the final would be something of an understatement. Their opponents, Wolverhampton Wanderers, had finished the season as runners-up in the First Division, and they had powered their way to Wembley, beating Bradford Park Avenue, Leicester City, Liverpool and the eventual league champions Everton, before beating that season's surprise package, Grimsby Town, 5-0 in the other semi-final at Old Trafford. They'd scored nineteen goals in their five FA Cup matches prior to the final. Under the managership of the influential Major Frank Buckley, and captained by the twenty-three year old Stan Cullis (who would go on to manage the great Wolves team of the 1950s), it seemed like a formality that they would end their season with victory at Wembley. As has happened so often in the FA Cup final, though, Portsmouth failed to read the script, and manager Jack Tinn (who famously ascribed his team's success to his "lucky spats" - fabric shoe covers, in case you were wondering) went on to cause a surprise every bit as big as the more famous (and more recent) FA Cup Final surprises.

The match was played, of course, at Wembley on the 29th April. Portsmouth took the lead after half an hour, when Bert Barlow (who had signed for Portsmouth from Wolves earlier in the season) with a cross-cum-shot. Wolves, who were famed for their youth, had frozen on the big day and Portsmouth doubled their lead just before half-time when Jimmy McAlinden crossed the ball over the stranded Wolves goalkeeper Alec Scott for Scottish striker John Anderson to score from close range. Two-nil up at half-time, Portsmouth could have been forgiven for taking their foot off the pedal, but any chances of a second half revival were quashed a minute in, when Scott fumbled a shot and had to stretch his arm out and put his hand on the ball on the goal line to stop the ball from going in. It was only momentary respite for the unfortunate Wolves goalkeeper, though, as winger Cliff Parker ran in and kicked the ball away from under his hand to make it 3-0. There was a glimmer of hope for Wolves when Dicky Dorsett pulled a goal back for Wolves from close range eight minutes later, but the match ended as a contest after 71 minutes when Fred Worrall crossed for Parker to head in his second goal of the match. It finished 4-1 to Portsmouth.

Jack Tinn retired as manager in 1947 and was replaced by Bob Jackson, but he was credited with building the Portsmouth team that won the First Division championship in 1949 and 1950. Although they managed to finish in third place in 1955, the team fell into a decline and were relegated in 1959, and it took until 1987 for them to get back into the top division under the managership of Alan Ball (having sunk as low as the Fourth Division in 1978), but with financial problems hampering their progress, they were relegated after just one season. In recent times, their best FA Cup run came in 1992, when they beat Nottingham Forest on the way to a famous semi-final against Liverpool. Having drawn the first match, it looked as if they were on their way to a massive surprise when Darren Anderton put them ahead in extra-time. However, Ronnie Whelan levelled things up with a couple of minutes left to play, and Liverpool won the subsequent penalty shoot-out. It has taken Portsmouth sixteen years to get this far in the FA Cup again, and the sense of expectation in the town is palpable. News reports earlier this week showed people that had queued all night at Fratton Park to get their hands on the last few tickets for tomorrow's match, and there seems to be a growing belief that this will be their year. The media might not care too much for the FA Cup now that the famous names have been knocked out, but it would be foolhardy to suggest to a Portsmouth fan that it doesn't matter any more.

The 1912 Overture

There are a couple of parallels between the FA Cup exploits of Cardiff City and Bansley. Both have won the FA Cup just the once, having lost the final two years previously. For Barnsley supporters, though the wait has been an even longer one - their one and only FA Cup win came in 1912. The two seasons prior to their win had been fairly tumultuous ones. In 1910, they had made the FA Cup final for the first time, losing 2-0 in a replay to Newcastle United after a 1-1 draw as a Second Division side. Their form collapsed the following season and, with the League only having two divisions at the time, they were forced to apply for re-election.


The 1911/12 FA Cup run was a marathon one for them. They required a replay to beat Birmingham City in the First Round, and then having seen of Leicester Fosse and Bolton Wanderers, needed three replays to see off Yorkshire rivals Bradford City to set up a semi-final against Swindon Town. The semi-final, which was described by the Manchester Guardian as "brutal" also went to a replay, before a 1-0 win sent them to Crystal Palace for the final. Their opposition, West Bromwich Albion, had a somewhat smoother route to the final, beating Tottenham Hotspur, Leeds City, Sunderland and Fulham before beating Blackburn Rovers after a replay at Hillsborough.

Details of what happened in the final itself are understandably sketchy, though possibly the most exciting thing to happen all afternoon was an abortive attempt by West Bromich Albion supporters to launch a blue and white striped hot air balloon before the match, which collapsed back to the ground in flames in what must have looked like a strange precreation of the Hindenburg disaster. West Bromich Albion hit the post towards the end of the match, but this was the highlight of a dull 0-0 draw. The replay was held at Bramall Lane in front of a crowd of 38,000, and a collection before the match in aid of the Titanic Disaster Fund collected over £49 - a tidy sum in 1912. The match itself, however, was not much of an improvement on the first match, and went into extra time with the scores still locked at 0-0. However, with two minutes of extra-time to play (and FA officials probably sweating about how they were going to put on a second replay - the penalty shootout hadn't been invented in 1912), the Barnsley right-half Tufnell broke from the halfway line, ran through on goal and scored the winner.

As at Cardiff, the club failed to build on their success. Barnsley took until 1997 to reach the top flight of English football, and were relegated after just one season. Since then, they have had spells in the Championship and League One and been threatened with closure. This season, they currently sit just two places and one point above the League One relegation places, and the worry for their supporters is that the distraction of the FA Cup might lead to their relegation. My personal conviction is that they shouldn't worry about it. Barnsley have played in all four divisions of the Football League, and relegation simply isn't the disaster that the media likes to portray it as. The opportunity to win the FA Cup, however is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and Barnsley will never have a better chance to do it than this season. If they need any further proof of this, they need only look back to the false dawn of 1912.

When Cardiff Won The Cup

Over the next couple of days, we'll be looking at the previous FA Cup exploits of this year's four semi-finalists, starting with Cardiff City, who take on Barnsley at Wembley on Sunday afternoon. It's a myth that requires some deconstruction - over the last few days, certain quarters of the Welsh press have been building up the "Wales vs England" aspect of the match, echoing former owner Sam Hammam's invocation of Welsh folklore and talk of Cardiff being the club representing "all of Wales", talk which was made to the chagrin of Swansea City supporters, to say the least. The 1927 FA Cup run has very much been a part of that mythology, but it was somewhat less remarkable than some people might have you believe.

The truth of the matter is that, whilst Cardiff's run to the FA Cup final was an outstanding achievement, it wasn't quite the major upset that one might expect that it was. Cardiff had been voted into the Football League in 1920 and went straight into Division Two, winning promotion at the first attempt. The following season they finished fourth in Division One, and in 1924 they almost won the Football League championship - level on points with Huddersfield Town, they lost out on goal average, when under current rules they would have won the league on goals scored. Their opponents in the 1927 Final, Arsenal, were also hardly the aristocrats that you might think. Herbert Chapman had arrived as their manager in 1925, but in 1927 they had never won a major trophy (their first, the FA Cup, would come in 1930) and in the 1926/27 season they had finished just three places and two points above Cardiff City in the league.

Cardiff's FA Cup run started with a Third Round win against Aston Villa an Ninian Park. The big result of their run came in the Fifth Round, when they beat Bolton Wanderers, the previous year's FA Cup winners and a club that were, at the time of the match, still challenging for that year's league title, 2-0 at Burnden Park. In the quarter-finals, they beat Chelsea after a replay and the semi-finals saw them brush aside Second Division side Reading at Molineux. It wasn't Cardiff's first trip to Wembley - two years before they had reached the FA Cup final, losing to Sheffield United. Arsenal's run to the final was a similarly mixed bag of opponents. They also had a difficult Third Round match, beating Sheffield United 3-2, before beating Port Vale, Liverpool and Wolverhampton Wanderers. Their semi-final also pitted them against Second Division opposition. They beat Southampton 2-1 at Stamford Bridge in a controversial match which reportedly saw Southampton denied two clear penalties.

The Final was played at Wembley on St George's Day - the 23rd of April 1927, and was the first to be broadcast live on the radio by the BBC. It was, by all accounts, a disappointing match, with both teams having adopted defensive formations. The key moment came in the seventy-third minute, when Cardiff's Hughie Ferguson shot tamely at Arsenal goalkeeper Dan Lewis. Lewis, possibly taking his eye off the ball to watch out for strikers that were chasing in for a potential follow-up, spilled the ball and seemed to almost throw the ball into the goal. The goal took on mythical qualities in both Cardiff and North London. For Cardiff, it proved to be enough to win the club its only major honour. After the match, Lewis blamed the error on his new shirt, claiming that the ball had slipped through his grasp because it hadn't been washed before the match. To this day, all Arsenal goalkeeper shirts are washed before they're used in matches. After the match, the film recording of the match were sent by courier to Cardiff, where it was shown in cinemas that evening.

On the basis of that result, one might have expected Cardiff City to go on to become one of the powerhouses of English football, but they failed to build on their success. They did manage to finish in sixth place in 1929, but were relegated the following season and then went down into the Third Division South the following year. This Sunday's match against Barnsley will be their first visit to Wembley since 1927. For Arsenal, the match proved to be a dress rehearsal for greater things. Under Chapman's leadership, they returned to Wembley in 1930 to win the FA Cup, and then won three successive league championships before his untimely death from pneumonia in January 1934. Chapman was one of the game's greatest innovators - he introduced white sleeves to Arsenal's shirts, was the first person to experiment with white footballs (which he did by keeping a bucket of whitewash by the touchline which balls were dipped in every time they went out of play) and has also had the idea of numbers on the backs of players' shirts and also carried out experiments with floodlighting, although this idea wasn't approved by the FA until almost two decades after his death.

There is also a sad footnote to the story of the 1927 FA Cup final in relation to two of the key characters involved. Dan Lewis, the Arsenal goalkeeper, remained as their first choice goalkeeper until the 1930 FA Cup Final, when he was surprisingly dropped by Herbert Chapman, who explained the decision by stating that he didn't think that Lewis would be able to cope with the pressure of the match. After this, his career went into a steep decline and he retired in 1932, after having been transferred to Gillingham. For the Cardiff goalscorer Hughie Ferguson, the story would end in tragedy. A Scot by birth (Ferguson had been signed by Cardiff after having scored 284 goals in nine seasons for Motherwell), he returned to Scotland in 1929 to play for Dundee. Unfairly burdened with the weight of expectation as a result of his previous goalscoring record, he was unable to deliver, sank into depression and committed suicide by gassing himself at Dundee's Dens Park in January 1930.

Few would have predicted in 1927 that it would take Cardiff City over eighty years to earn a return trip to Wembley, and even fewer would have been able to guess what that Wembley stadium would look like. There has been considerable disquiet about the fact that this year's semi-finals are being played there as well as the final, but I suspect that the primary factor behind this decision is the need to claw back as much money as possible to cover the stadium's vast construction costs. The media will continue to build the match up as being a match between England and Wales, although the fact that the opposition may have dissipated the worst excesses of the press in that respect. Cardiff supporters will be hoping amongst hopes that it is less than eighty years before their next visit to Wembley.

You can see (exceptionally brief) highlights of the 1927 FA Cup Final here.

Tales Of The Unexpected

You could tell that, by yesterday lunchtime, large parts of the media had run out of things to say about this year's FA Cup. With Manchester United and Chelsea having been eliminated, the autocues ran dry and the tippity-lapping of the hacks hunched over their laptops slowed to a halt. Barnsley, Cardiff City, West Bromwich Albion and Portsmouth? Oh. What can we find to say about them? On Sunday afternoon, the final two FA Cup quarter-finals were played out and, surprise surprise, the penultimate Premier League club left in this year's competition fell by the wayside. Once again, this year's FA Cup has demonstrated that rumours of The Death Of English Football might just have been over-exaggerated. There's life in the old girl yet.

There was something quite predictable about Middlesbrough not turning up for their match against Cardiff City. I have slated Gareth Southgate on here before, but he has at least taken the Cup seriously, and probably deserved better than the lethargic performance that he got from his players. Faced with an outstanding chance (they will surely never have it that easy again, would they?) to win the FA Cup, his team folded and Cardiff City will return to Wembley for the semi-finals for the first time since 1927. In the evening, West Bromwich Albion had too much in the tank for Bristol Rovers to be able to cope with. There is a certain element of destiny about Albion's cup run - it's forty years exactly since they last made the cup final, and they were also the last team to win the FA Cup and get promoted in the same season (even though this happened in 1931).

The semi-final draw was made yesterday lunchtime, and it lined Portsmouth up against West Bromwich Albion, whilst Barnsley will play Cardiff City. One of the sub-plots to these matches will concern the Barnsley goalkeeper Luke Steele. Steele in on loan to Barnsley from West Bromwich Albion, and his outstanding performances made up a large part of the reason for The Tykes' wins against Liverpool and Chelsea. It would be a massive disappointment if Barnsley and West Bromwich Albion were to get to the FA Cup final and Albion barred him from playing, but that debate is for another day. In case you were wondering, by the way, it has been exactly 100 years since there was only team from the top division in the semi-finals, as well. Meanwhile, Cardiff were the last non-English team to win the FA Cup, and Barnsley haven't made this stage of the competition since 1912. It will be firsts all round, this season, no matter who wins, and this is all the more refreshing when one considers the turgid performance with which Manchester United and Chelsea baptised the new Wembley stadium last May.

The failure of the big clubs to make so much as the semi-finals this year is certainly a curiosity. The vast financial advantages that they enjoy render the argument that "they don't care about the FA Cup" largely irrelevant. Even if they put their reserve teams out, the Big Four at least should surely have had enough about them to find one representative in the Last Four. The fact of the matter is that Chelsea put out a very, very strong team at Oakwell on Saturday, as did Manchester United against Portsmouth earlier in the afternoon. They both have strength in depth that even other teams in the Premier League would kill for. I am coming to the opinion that the difference between the Premier League and the rest isn't as great as many would like to think that it is. Teams in the Championship are as tightly-drilled and well organised as those playing in the Premier League, these days, and they have proved themselves to be capable of matching them all the way.

The big danger for the FA is that, now the superstars have their attention diverted elsewhere, he rest of the world will lose interest. The FA Cup may have already had its final for 2008 - it's just that there were several of them, and they were played in February and March. The media will certainly find it more expedient to concentrate on the Champions League, where the names are reassuringly familiar and the rivalries are cast in stone. There's no need to do any research when you can just fill the back pages and the pre-match preamble with debates about Frank Lampard, whether Arsenal should shoot more and whether Liverpool will be affected by the ongoing backstage rumblings at Anfield. There will probably be plenty of talk about how this year's semi-final line-up demonstrates that the FA Cup doesn't matter any more, but the truth of the matter is that the opposite is closer to the truth. There are plenty of people for whom the perfect future would be battles of attrition between Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool, being played out for all eternity.

However, for those of us that value more than the celebrity lifestyles of the rich and the famous, the FA Cup is living proof of a fundamental truth of football that we thought had died out. The hopelessly imbalanced distribution of money with the English game has skewed the league system to the point of being hopelessly predictable, and the league system itself has the inherent feature of making the one off surprise result unimportant. The law of averages determines that the richest will always win, because they always have the capacity to bounce back from an unexpected defeat. This (and the extra money from the extra matches) was the primary factor behind the European Cup converting itself into the Champions League, and the result has been that you now see the same clubs in the last sixteen every season. If Manchester United, Chelsea, Portsmouth and Barnsley had played each other twice in a mini-group rather than against each other in one off cup matches, there can be little doubt that Manchester United and Chelsea would have won through to the next round. They would argue that this is a desirable situation, and that there is too much at stake, financially speaking, for failure to be an option. Once you stray into this territory, however, you are no longer talking about football as a sport. - you are talking about it solely as a business. And for all the fireworks, booming music and people shouting "THIS IS IMPORTANT" at me, I remain unconvinced after all these years.

It is, I think, critical, that we watch the remainder of this year's FA Cup. Our failure to do so will be a vindication for those that see football as being purely a business. You can be absolutely certain that small TV audiences for the semi-finals and the final will be used as evidence for the FA Cup's irrelevance in the modern game, when the truth of the matter is that the presence of four of the more modest names in English football at this stage of the competition is proof of the opposite. It demonstrates the enormous strength in depth of English football, and of the fact that, for all the talk of "modernisation" and "revenue streams", we are still the owners of a competition that appeals to an instinct that runs deeper than a desire to see Big Football. If the media chooses to, it could yet ruin the 2008 FA Cup, but there are stories to be told about the clubs still in it that could yet capture the public imagination, and the interest surrounding the exploits of the likes of Barnsley and Havant & Waterlooville demonstrates that this thirst still exists. It is now down to us, the audience, to prove that we are fans of the game, and not just consumers that are only interested in big, sparkly baubles.

Tired & Emotional

Savour this evening, and tomorrow. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that you should savour the rest of this season's FA Cup competition, because Big Money won't allow an oversight like this to happen again. We're half-way through the quarter-finals of the FA Cup, and Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool aren't going to win it. Neither, for that matter, are Everton, Newcastle United, Spurs or West Ham United. In fact, of the six clubs left in this year's competition now, two of them (Bristol Rovers and Middlesbrough) have never won it whilst none of the other four have done since West Bromwich Albion did in 1968 - of the other three, Cardiff City won it in 1927, Portsmouth did in 1939 and Barnsley did in 1912. Whatever happens from here on in, it has been an absolutely engrossing tournament so far, and the clubs left in the tournament should be proud of what they have already achieved. We will also get to see two FA Cup semi-finals and an FA Cup Final which are more than a weak consolation prize for teams that have spent the whole of the season with their eyes on other, bigger prizes. These matches will mean everything to those concerned, and the competition will benefit as a whole from this. Also, the prize of European football next season in the UEFA Cup could end up in a some very unlikely hands come next autumn.

So, this afternoon's matches, then. Both of today's matches looked like nailed-on certainties. Manchester United have been almost uniformly awesome at Old Trafford this season, whilst most surely believed that Chelsea would be too strong for a Barnsley team that had stretched every single collective sinew in beating Liverpool at Anfield in the last round. They couldn't repeat that, could they? Well, Manchester United simply had no luck against Portsmouth, from Louis Saha getting injured in the warm up, to Edwin Van Der Saar getting injured in the first half and Rio Ferdinand having to take over after Tomasz Kuszczak was (correctly) sent off for the foul that won Portsmouth the match from the penalty spot. In truth, United paid the price for their own profligacy in front of goal. Evra's shot was brilliantly pushed onto the post by David James. The ball got wedged on the goal line a couple of times but they failed to poke it over. Ironically, the one thing that Alex Ferguson really did complain about (the tackle on Cristiano Ronaldo by Sylvain Distain) was absolutely, defintitely not a penalty. He should have saved his breath and expended the energy and torn a strip out of Wayne Rooney and Carlos Tevez instead. Ultimately, Portsmouth deserved their win for a terrific rear-guard performance, with old stagers such as David James rolling back the years to keep a strong United team.

This, though, was the mere appetiser. Barnsley vs Chelsea was the authentic, old fashioned FA Cup experience. The clicheed southern, overpaid fancy dans against the gritty northerners - only, with the advent of the Premier League multimillionaires, this cliche has escaped from the bottle to become a truth in itself. It felt as if someone was scripting proceedings from the very start, to the point that it would have been unsurprising if the teams had come out onto the pitch behind a brass band. There was definitely something in the air, too. The crowd of 22,000 sounded like three times the size that it was - it was a solid wall of noise - and Barnsley rose to the occasion, demonstrating that if you are going to follow a script, you should at least follow one for a film that people are going to want to see. It's difficult to pick out one single performance in a team that put in such a display, but Rob Kozluk put in a performance of staggering determination. Throwing his entire body into tackles, blocking, hacking the ball away when it seemed to be stuck under his feet on the edge of the six yard area - he was everywhere across the back line, preventing Chelsea's expensively assembled midfield and attack from creating any real, clear cut chances. Meanwhile, at the other end, Chelsea's defence was showing signs of being accommodating enough to allow them chances to snatch a goal - at half-time, it was goalless, but Barnsley had had the better of the chances.

Chelsea started the second half as the stronger of the two sides, but something wasn't quite right. It looked as if the ball was being controlled from the stands by a remote control whenever they got hold of it - over-hitting passes, looping shots high into the crowd behind the goal, treading on it and generally acting like the stars of a new film called "Carry On Football". Mid-way through the second half, Barnsley seized their moment. Martin Devaney crossed from the right, and Kayode Odejayi out-jumped Cudicini to put the home side a goal up. From then on, they put ten men behind the ball and defended as if their lives depended upon it. Chelsea threw men forward, but were still unable to create very much in the way of clear chances. Luke Steele continued to make a mockery of the few weeks that he has been at Oakwell by commanding his defence magnificently and claiming every ball that went into the six yard box. The last ten minutes was the tensest that I have seen all season. I was on the edge of my seat, wondering if I could justify going for a walk round the block to count the clock down. When the whistle blew after ninety-three minutes of absolutely pulsating football, the crowd invaded the pitch to celebrate with the players. It was a perfect end to a perfect afternoon.

There is, of course, still plenty of scope for Middlesbrough and Portsmouth to ruin this by playing out a dismal 0-0 draw at Wembley in May. There will definitely be plenty of bleating about how the FA Cup doesn't matter any more from supporters of The Big Four (who neatly overlook the fact that the Champions League doesn't matter to the supporters of any clubs apart from theirs, and that the majority of the rest of us don't even really care much what happens in the Champions League). There will probably be a lower television audience for the final (and probably two semi-finals at Wembley that don't sell the place out), but really, who cares? Barnsley and Portsmouth took a little piece of our game back for us this afternoon. Not much? Possibly. Temporarily? Almost certainly. Those arguments, however, are for another day. For now, let's just luxuriate in the warming glow of the greatest cup competition in the world.

Fantasy vs Reality

At least on the pitch, this season hasn't been a bad one for the dreamers amongst us. Liverpool were knocked out of the FA Cup at home by lower division opposition, a team from outside the Big Four won the League Cup (and there was genuine goodwill from most neutrals that they did so), and England's celebrity-studded excuse for a football team got the wake up call that they deserved by failing to qualify for a sixteen nation European Championship. The suspicion remains, however, that the bad guys will win in the end.

I remain constantly surprised by the amount of coverage that is granted to the Champions League in the newspapers. This morning's Independent devotes four pages to this evening's matches although, somewhat predictably, the Barcelona vs Celtic and Sevilla vs Fenerbahce matches scarcely warrant a mention. It is, one can only surmise, very important stuff, and it's this mortal fear that everyone else may be right and that I may be wrong which is the reason why, in spite of myself, I will probably tune in to watch the Milan vs Arsenal match tonight.

This all contrasts with this weekend's FA Cup Quarter-Finals, in which a sizeable proportion of the population will be willing Portsmouth and Barnsley to overcome Manchester United and Chelsea. The gulf between the likes of United and Chelsea and the rest can be best exemplified by a story in this morning's paper that barely warranted six lines. Andriy Shevchenko was picked to play for Chelsea reserves at Griffin Park, Brentford, last night. A £31m player, who is a national icon at home in the Ukraine, Shevchenko is currently the subject of what is starting to look like a series of public humiliations which leads one to believe that he is being railroaded out of Stamford Bridge. He hasn't played for the first team's Christmas match against Aston Villa, and Chelsea's public statement that he is recovering from injury is somewhat undermined by the fact that no-one seems to be able to state with any confidence what his injury actually is. The weekend's fixtures could, in an ideal world, finish up with Manchester United facing an unwelcome trip to the south coast for a replay against Portsmouth, Chelsea getting dumped out at Barnsley and Bristol Rovers continuing to fly the flag for League One in the semi-finals. The worst case scenario would see United and Chelsea both sail through, and avoid each other in the semi-finals. I think I know which of the above is more likely to happen, but I'm going to take a moment to dare to dream regardless.

Anyway, you can join me on here for live minute-by-minute updates on Milan vs Arsenal match this evening. It's 0-0 at half-time, and Arsenal (whose league performances of late have been ropey, to say the least) will keeping their fingers crossed that they can justify the occasionally overblown statements about the quality of football that they play. I wouldn't be expecting it to be terribly objective, though.

...And Chelsea Will Play...

There has been a mixed reaction to last weekend's FA Cup results. The split seems to have been something like 50/50. On the one hand, there are those like James Lawton of The Independent, who regarded Arsenal's performance at Old Trafford on Saturday evening as a portent of doom for the FA Cup. He seems, in his article, to live in a different world to the rest of us, and also overlooks the fact that a sizeable number of the rest of us couldn't give a damn how seriously the "Big Four" take it. The simple fact of the matter is that these clubs have resources which are so vastly greater than anyone else's that it shouldn't even matter whether they put out their entire reserve teams. What we learnt from last weekend's FA Cup matches is that Arsenal, for all the hubris surrounding them (and Lawton himself is at the centre of that particular vortex), don't actually have very great strength in depth, and that the same applies to an even greater extent with Liverpool. Both sides were undone by teams that wanted it more.

Curiously, this morning's news that Avram Grant is likely to rest John Terry and Frank Lampard for Chelsea's Champions League match against Olympiakos ahead of next weekend's League Cup final against Spurs isn't being talked about in this respect. No-one is suggesting with any degree of seriousness that he doesn't take the Champions League as seriously as the League Cup, is he? Anyway, after a few weeks of football that doesn't matter to anyone, the SERIOUS BUSINESS of the Champions League returns with what they now call The Round Of Sixteen. Golly. It had better be good. I mean, we're constantly told about where the clubs' priorities lay and about how this is Premium Product. No room for error, then, boys. A lot of people across Europe will be paying Premium Product ticket prices to get in, and a good number of sponsors will be paying Premium Product advertising revenues to be associated with it. I think we're entitled to expect every match to finish 5-4 or 7-7. With four sendings off per match. Unburdened by such expectations, the FA Cup merely trundles on, with the draw for the quarter-finals having been made yesterday. Here's a quick run-down of who's playing who.

Manchester United vs Portsmouth: Manchester United's steamrollering of dismal, dismal Arsenal on Saturday afternoon was extraordinary in that Arsenal's worst performance of the last ten years managed simultaneously to not even be Manchester United's best performance of the season. As ever, a lot of it will come down to how "seriously" United take it - will they chuck the stiffs out again, or will Alex Ferguson go overboard and play both Tevez and Rooney? I'm almost literally bursting with excitement and anticipation. Of all the teams that United could have drawn, Portsmouth must have been pretty close to the bottom the list. Harry Redknapp has out-thought Alex Ferguson a few times down the years both at West Ham United and at Portsmouth, but this is a very tall order. You'd fancy them to maybe nick it at Fratton Park, but is a trip to Old Trafford a step too far?

Barnsley vs Chelsea: All of that gargantuan effort to beat Liverpool at Anfield, and this is Barnsley's reward - a home tie against football's equivalents of The Phantom Of The Opera. Back in the day, pundits would have stroked their chins, sucked in on their pipes and wistfully said, "Ooh, they won't fancy a visit to Oakwell at this time of year", but it's all different these days. There are some cautious reasons for Barnsley to have grounds for optimism - I still believe that Chelsea are supremely over-rated and that they win a considerable number of Premier League points through outright intimidation. I'm inclined to think that the confidence that Barnsley will have earned from their Anfield result could count in their favour somewhat, here. I wouldn't be betting any money on it, though.

Bristol Rovers vs West Bromwich Albion: West Bromwich Albion haven't had a terribly good start to 2008, though when they are playing well, they're pretty awesome. This is a decent draw for Rovers, whose win against Southampton at the weekend was thoroughly deserved. If the pitch at The Memorial Ground is in anything like the condition that it was in last weekend for the quarter-final, anything could happen.

Middlesbrough or Sheffield United vs Cardiff City: It is (as I think I mentioned on here before) that this is as far as Cardiff City have got in the FA Cup since they won it in 1927, but that is about as interesting as it gets in any way for this match. The Sheffield United vs Middlesbrough match last weekend was as poor a match as I can remember watching in the FA Cup (and, of course, with it being the only replay in this round, it's guaranteed to be live on the television as well), and the massive applause that the United team got at the end of the match was an indication of how far down Bryan Robson managed to drag their expectations before his sacking last week. What odds on a Bristol Rovers vs Cardiff City semi-final at Wembley in front of 80,000 people?

FA Cup Fifth Round Review

With every round that comes and goes now, the inevitable slides closer and closer into view. Manchester United vs Chelsea for the second year in row, boring the hell out of each other (as well as all of us) with a terrible, attritional FA Cup final at the strangely echo-ey new Wembley Stadium. Still, never mind, because yesterday's Fifth Round was another cracker, with Liverpool biting the dust in frankly spectacular circumstances. After Dirk Kuyt put Liverpool in front, a string of spectacular saves kept Barnsley in the game and the creeping feeling started to envelop me that Liverpool's confidence was brittle enough for this to all go wrong, and so it proved when Stephen Foster levelled the scores. Liverpool continued to dominate, but none of this is to say that Barnsley didn't deserve the win - Brian Howard's winner, in the third minute of injury time, came after the referee bottled giving Barnsley a last minute penalty kick after a clear trip in Howard. Liverpool's season, then, is continuing to unravel. With Inter to follow this week in the Champions League, they might only have an uphill battle to hold onto their European place to look forward to.

The other big surprise of the day took place at The Memorial Ground in Bristol, the pleasingly retro looking temporary home of Bristol Rovers, who beat Southampton 1-0 thanks to a free-kick that took a massive, sumptuous deflection off Southampton's Jermaine Wright and left Kelvin Davis diving for a shot that wasn't coming. As the cameras shakily panned across the disbelieving crowd, a little shiver ran down my spine - the realisation hitting me that this is what it's all about. Truth be told, Rovers had matched The Saints for the entire game, and deserved their win as much as Barnsley did theirs. Rickie Lambert had what looked like a perfectly good goal disallowed goal before his shot cannoned off the unfortunate Wright. Southampton had five minutes to try and rescue something from the game, but with a swirling wind and on a terrible pitch, they never looked likely to. Rovers, then, are in the FA Cup Quarter Finals for the first time in fifty years.

The other Premier League teams through to the quarter-finals are, of course, Manchester United and Chelsea. United beat Arsenal in a match blighted by the fact that both managers saw fit to rest about half of their players. What the 4-0 result did seem to confirm was that Arsenal simply have no strength in depth whatsoever. On a day during which none of their players really covered themselves in any glory it seems a little unfair to pick out any individual player, but it has to be said that Arsene Wenger's faith in Justin Hoyte is baffling, to say the least. Still, at least when Arsenal lose, they do it in style. 5-1 at Spurs and 4-0 at Manchester United are cup results that sit somewhat peculiarly next to their league form, and they have to travel to Milan in the week. Chelsea, meanwhile, overcame Huddersfield Town at Stamford Bridge, but not before they were given an almighty surprise when Michael Collins headed Huddersfield level right on half-time. They were, ultimately, no matches for the Premier League behemoths, and Chelsea could, in all honesty, have had five or six.

The final two matches were all-Championship affairs. Newly managerless Coventry City had what one can only describe as a "bad day at the office" at home against West Bromwich Albion. They'd been matching Albion ball for ball and were arguably unfortunate to be a single goal down. when Michael Doyle was sent off a couple of minutes into the second half. They folded after this, though, and Albion ran out easy 5-0 winners in the end. Last but not least, Cardiff City, as every good schoolboy knows, last won the FA Cup in 1927, but they're back in the quarter-finals for the first time since then after having beaten Wolverhampton Wanderers, thanks to two early goals at Ninian Park. The second, scored by Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, was worth the admission fee on its own. This afternoon, Sheffield United play Middlesbrough at Bramall Lane, and then Preston North End play Portsmouth. The lingering possibility remains that there could be just two Premier League teams in the last eight of the FA Cup - it couldn't happen, could it?

Football Shorts

Over the course of the normal working day, many things flash through my head which I either don't have the time to write up in full or aren't quite fleshy enough to warrant a full article on here. Here are some of the things that have been playing on my mind over the last week or so.

Wasn't January Great? I can't remember another month which has provided so much entertainment. We've seen the crisis at Anfield (which has opened up the Premier League in a way that no-one would have anticipated at the start of the season), the ongoing circus at Newcastle United, two marvellous rounds of the FA Cup, Leeds United losing Dennis Wise and slumping in the league, Franchise letting the chasing pack catch them up in League Two and the outstanding group stages of the African Cup Of Nations. If 2008 carries on at this rate, it's going to be a great year. It won't, though, will it?

Steamy Windows The press are the only people that get massively excited about the January transfer window, aren't they? There's always a frantic rush of excitement on the back pages towards the end of December with feverish speculation over who is going to be going where, and it always turns out to be a bit of a let down. Jermaine Defoe to Portsmouth, Nicolas Anelka to Chelsea and Jonathan Woodgate to Spurs have been the big moves over the last month or so, and Defoe's move was only really exciting because it happened at the very, very last minute. I've got a mental image of it taking place on a bridge in the middle of nowhere, rather like spies being exchanged in a cold war thriller, for some reason. Except, um, there's only one "spy".

Fabio Luvs David It is a clear sign that the world has gone mad, when acres and acres of press coverage are given over to the England squad selection for a friendly match against Switzerland, but I'll allow some slack to be cut on it because it does at least allow us a window into the world of the curious relationship between Fabio Cappello and David Beckham. Cappello was, of course, Beckham's bete noire at Real Madrid, dropping him from the first team and then offloading him to LA Galaxy. Now, with Beckham on 99 England caps and desperate to win his 100th, Cappello has left him out of the squad for the Switzerland match. It is easy to come to the conclusion that Fabio just doesn't like David that much, but I don't think that this is necessarily true. Cappello is a ruthless pragmatist, and I am inclined towards thinking that this was partly a pure football decision (Beckham has barely kicked a competitive ball in the last three months) and partly Cappello imposing his will on the no squad ("bollocks to this so-called 'golden generation' and their entourage, if you play for Fabio, you play on merit and nothing else"). Also, Cappello has sought to assure Beckham that the door isn't entirely closed, which strikes me as being merely good management. Personally, I think he should put Beckham on the bench, bring him on with two minutes to play, and then substitute him again thirty seconds later. Beckham would get his cap, Fabio would send out a clear message, and it would kind of sum up Beckham's international career into the bargain.

Oh Bugger I was momentarily feverishly excited at the news that AFC Wimbledon had drawn Torquay United in the Third Round of the FA Trophy, until I remembered that I'd already agreed to go to Preston to see friends this weekend and that even if I rescheduled this, I'd be helping some friends move house in Brighton this Saturday afternoon. Sometimes the football gods conspire against you, and there's nothing you can do about it. Should anybody be interested in watching it, I'll be doing a topless raindance on the balcony of my flat at 9.00 tomorrow morning in the interests of getting it postponed and rescheduled to Tuesday night, when I would be able to go. Just kidding. Good luck on Saturday, Wombles.

Some Final Thoughts On Havant & Waterlooville

There has been plenty of comment in many different places on the subject of Havant & Waterlooville's FA Cup run, and their performance on Saturday. There are many people more closely involved in what has been going on than I am, but I thought that I would take opportunity to add some final, personal thoughts on the subject before laying it to rest for the time being. As I mentioned on here earlier, we heard a lot of cliche over the weekend, but it continues to delight me that, in such a cynical age as this, we haven't forgotten our capacity to be delighted by football, and by minor acts of heroism. The last few days have been a time to forget about the harsh realities of the modern game, with its nepotism, closed shops and spirit-sapping commercialism. It has been a time to revel in the sort of shared experience that I had been starting to think was dead in modern football.

It is worth reminding everyone reading this that, for a club of the size of Havant & Waterlooville, this truly is a "once in a lifetime" experience. For Havant (and they are by no means the smallest club to enter into the FA Cup), it took them eight matches to get this far, against stronger and stronger opposition. They started, in the Second Qualifying round, with an away match against Bognor Regis Town, who are in the same division as them. They had to beat three teams that play at a higher level than them. In the First Round, they beat York City (one division above them) away from home. In the Second Round, they beat Notts County (two divisions above them). In the Third Round, they beat Swansea City (top of League One - three divisions above them). Merely to get to Anfield in the first place was an achievement of Herculean proportions - to make a game of it and give the club that called themselves the champions of Europe not so long ago the fright of their lives is icing on the cake. We don't know how long we'll have to wait for a team to repeat it. It might be next year, it could be a decade.

They have been handsomely rewarded for their endeavour. The FA Cup divides gate receipts equally between the two competing clubs, so 50% of the money that people paid at Anfield on Saturday will have gone to Havant & Waterlooville, as well as 50% of the gate receipts for their earlier matches. The prize money (they have bagged nearly £100,000 for winning all of the matches that they have won this season) is a significant amount for a club of their size. There's every chance that they have made £1m from their adventure. An astronomical amount for a club of their size. One will have to hope that they choose to spend this money wisely, as a safeguard for the club's future. Time will tell on whether they do this, or whether they get carried away with their wealth and throw it all away into the unquenchable bonfire that is the world of footballers' wages. It may prove to be a difficult temptation to resist.

For now, though, the FA Cup has been given a massive breath of fresh air, and that is enough. The clubs that have treated it with disdain have been laughed out of court. It feels as if we've all remembered how much fun cup football can be, and with only six Premier League clubs left in the competition (one of whom, Manchester United or Arsenal, no less, is guaranteed to be knocked out in the Fifth Round, and two of whom, Middlesbrough and Portsmouth, have tricky away ties at Sheffield United and Preston North End respectively), it could well get even more interesting yet.

FA Cup Fourth Round Review

The FA Cup Fourth Round, played out last weekend, was most peculiar. There were sixteen matches played, involving thirty-two clubs, and not a single one was drawn. It was the first time that this had happened in a shade of fifty years. I bet no-one at the BBC saw that one coming. Equally strange is the layout of the last sixteen of the competition. Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool are all ominously present and correct (fingers crossed that they draw each other in the fifth round, then), but the rest of the Premier League has been absolutely decimated. I pointed out here before that the best possible Premier League representation in the Fifth Round would be eight clubs, and the weekend's results mean that just six have survived - the Big Four, plus Middlesbrough and Portsmouth. I can't offer a definitive solution to this riddle. I remain less than convinced that this idea that "the Premier League doesn't care about the FA Cup any more". I simply cannot accept that professional sportsmen could sell their supporters down the river like that, and I also don't think that it is in the genetic make-up of the professional sportsman to not want to win. I remain convinced that it is simply that the majority of the Premier League is nowhere near as good as it thinks it is. If the Premier League was anything like as good as it thinks it is, Everton's reserves would have rolled Oldham Athletic, Birmingham City would have beaten Huddersfield Town and so on and so forth. Until lunchtime, when the Fifth Round draw is made, it's difficult to gauge how healthy this all is for the competition (the rest of the Premier League's capitulation could be seen as simply giving the Big Four a free run to the semi-finals if they manage to avoid each other in the draw), but it does at least make a pleasant change to see some different faces at this stage of the competition.


The vast majority of the weekend's plaudits were taken by Havant & Waterlooville, who inflicted up Liverpool arguably the most excruciating forty-five minutes of football in their entire history. It was inevitable that Liverpool would eventually overpower them, but the final score of 5-2 was highly flattering, and whilst some cynics snorted over the cliches about "the magic of the FA Cup" and it being "what dreams are made of", it's worth pointing out that lazy journalism will always be lazy journalism. Some people have also wondered aloud how many of the 6,000 people that travelled up from Hampshire to Anfield will be back at West Leigh Park next week. My mind turns to Woking's FA Cup adventure in 1991, when they took a similar number of supporters to The Hawthorns for their match against West Bromwich Albion. Prior to that FA Cup run, Woking had been a fairly typical lower division non-league team, getting by on crowds of three to four hundred. Their average home crowds immediately shot up after this cup run, giving them the springboard for two promotions which took them into the Conference, where they remain to this day. We shall wait to see with interest whether Havant & Waterlooville enjoy similar success.

Yesterday's back pages certainly made interesting reading, with particular regard to Newcastle's trip to The Emirates Stadium to play Arsenal. One "senior source" (presumably a disgruntled player) noted darkly that Kevin Keegan's team talk prior to the match consisted of telling his players that "Arsenal are a great passing team. We must make sure that we pass the ball better than them", and nothing else. Such tactical acumen was thoroughly rewarded with Arsenal swatting them aside by an eventual 3-0 scoreline. Two games, no goals and out of the FA Cup. The Keegan Revolution marches on. Two further Premier League teams bit the dust against lower division opposition. There was no great surprise at Pride Park, where Derby County's new American owners saw their team thrashed at home by Preston North End, who currently occupy one of the relegation places in the Championship. They must be wondering what they've let themselves in for, there. Slightly more surprising was Manchester City's capitulation at Sheffield United, not least because Sven Goran Eriksson seemed to have turned a corner in terms of turning City into a capable, organised outfit, whilst the involvement of Bryan Robson at Bramall Lane would appear to preclude Sheffield United from doing anything with much efficiency.

In Sunday lunchtime's match, Spurs were predictably hungover against Manchester United. With a makeshift defence playing, they took the lead at Old Trafford before capitulating, and the 3-1 scoreline seemed to flatter United, with Michael Dawson getting himself sent off for deliberate handball and Radek Cerny rolled over a tame, deflected shot by Cristiano Ronaldo to sew the game game. In spite of all of this, Spurs had their chances. Jermaine Jenas was put through on goal with the score tied at 1-1 but rolled the ball tamely wide, and Dimitar Berbatov bundled the ball against the post with United leading 2-1, so it could have been different, but Spurs are going to have to put this one down to experience and redouble their efforts in the League Cup and UEFA Cup.

Elsewhere, Middlesbrough were given an almighty scare by Mansfield Town before running out 2-0 winners and Portsmouth had to come from a goal behind before beating Plymouth Argyle. In the matches between the lower division sides, Bristol Rovers beat Barnet 1-0 at Underhill, Wolverhampton Wanderers raised a few eyebrows in beating Watford 4-1 at Vicarage Road, and Luke Beckett continued his impressive record - he scored the winning goal in Huddersfield Town's 1-0 win at Oldham Athletic, meaning that he has scored in all four rounds of the cup so far this season. The draw for the Fifth Round will be made at lunchtime, and the sixteen teams left in are as follows: Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea, Portsmouth, Middlesbrough, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Cardiff City, West Bromwich Albion, Sheffield United, Coventry City, Huddersfield Town, Bristol Rovers, Barnsley, Southampton and Preston North End. You can catch up with the weekend's goals here, and there will be a lengthy report on the Liverpool vs Havant & Waterlooville match here.