You go on an unbeaten home run of four games. You draw away from home in the fourth round of the FA Cup against fairly decent opponents and then get drawn away to mediocre opponents offering a chance of a fun cup run albeit bound to end in disappointment. A home match looms against previous Premier League Champions and you have just recruited a few new faces. All that remains is to go away to a beatable Scouse outfit that won the European Cup twelve months ago and rob an away win to avoid the rocky road of relegation. All bases are covered.
Just over twenty minutes in and DJ (the old one not the new one) receives a nice red card from his old mate Uriah Rennie. Our red card count has been abysmal. We are not, I repeat, not, going to win an Intertoto place based upon our disciplinary record. Bruce must have screwed up the cunning plan and threw it at Baldrick. I mean Eric Black.
To gain a point from such a position was incredible. The ten remaining players must have thought they were at Rorke’s Drift. DJ was a tad unlucky to encounter the referee from hell as the tackle may have been worthy of a free kick but not much else. There certainly didn’t appear any malice and far worse challenges have gone unpunished this season. Haven’t they Mr Essien?
Big respect to Xabi Alonso. Not only can he score from inside his own half but he can also beat his own goalkeeper with his chest. A remarkable feat. Can we play you every week indeed?
It would be a touch hypocritical of me to big up the FA Cup having slaughtered its place in our hearts last week. So I won’t.
You know what’s coming. You don’t need me to tell you do you? Oh, you do? Ok here goes. The very excellent Reading, promotion certainties, come to St Andrew’s and with a keen eye on securing their long term goal gracefully bow out of the cup to a resurgent Blues. Lowly Stoke who struggled against even lowlier Tamworth await and despite the ferocity of the welcome in the Potteries everyone expects the mighty Blues to march into the sixth round. Wrong. Stoke knock in two goals, both scored by unknowns that we make offers for in the close season and we trudge back to the second city with faces like married men who have been caught dogging.
The draw away to Reading was tremendous. Once again we went a goal down and came back. The start of the resurgence was the fightback against Manchester United. It showed character, it showed we did have some passion and some desire and some spirit. Ally it to the point on Merseyside with a reduced team and we are demonstrating that the squad is good enough but more importantly that the manager can motivate and fire the team up for the battle that lies ahead. Big respect to him as well.
Last season’s finale against Arsenal probably assisted in providing us with a false sense of potential achievements for this campaign. We thoroughly deserved to beat them and the same again would be marvellous. Arsenal are a wounded lion at the moment and in a transition phase. They have some good youngsters who are not quite strong enough to replace the older guys who are coming to the end like Bergkamp and those who have departed like Viera. Given time they will once again be a force in the Premiership but until then this is a prime opportunity to gain three more points towards our survival target.
Keep Right On. The FA Cup is like having a relationship with a super model, nice whilst you’re in it but ultimately doomed to failure. Apparently!