FA Cup Quarter Finals: 5 things that (may or may not have) happened

Joe Devine returns to discuss five things that may or may not have happened in the FA Cup this weekend…

1. Bradford’s Pitch Has More Craters Than Moon

According to reports, the Valley Parade pitch has more craters in it than the surface of the moon. Reading manager and amateur astronomer Steve Clarke told reporters on Saturday morning “I’ve had a look at the pitch, and, I’m not a moon ‘expert’, but I’m probably a moon ‘specialist’, and I think there’s more craters here.” Concerned for his players, Steve Clarke requested the assistance of fellow moon fan Nigel Pearson. After a short examination of the pitch, Nigel told reporters “I can look after myself”, before donning his NASA cap and sprinting off into a nearby growth of bushes. 

2. Brendan Rogers Officially Bad Again

After a lengthy spell of being good, and a brief spell of being “Jesus” good, Brendan Rogers has reportedly become bad once again. Initial speculation came during Liverpool’s match up with Blackburn on Sunday, and the first confirmation came upon the final whistle. Our reporter spoke to some Liverpool fans outside Anfield after the game, here’s what they had to say: “I don’t know why he’s gone bad again. He was good for a while, then he was really good and we were thinking ‘oh wow, he’s Jesus good’, you know? But now he just seems to have gone bad again and I’m worried about when he might be getting good again, you know?” Continue reading

“It was like winning the FA Cup” – Woodford United’s losing streak comes to an end

woodford picWe caught up with Woodford United manager Mitch Austin after a very memorable weekend for his football club…

After this weekend’s 2-1 victory against Blackstones FC, Woodford United ended a run of 65 successive defeats dating back to April 2012. That’s around 100 hours, or 6,000 minutes of football. Two goals from Harry Beckley were enough to see out the away win in the United Counties League (UCL) Division One which is Level 10 of the football pyramid. In the words of manager Mitch Austin, “It was like winning the FA Cup!”.

“It’s been a long time coming”, said Austin. “The club’s been in a bad place for the past 18 months.” After relegation from the Southern League last season, Woodford decided to drop down another division in hope of finding their level. Over the past year and a half, their plight has been picked up on and Andy Ollerenshaw had earmarked this fixture as a game they were capable of winning in his piece for When Saturday Comes last week. Continue reading

Hypothetical XI #17: The Best of Wigan Athletic in the Premier League

Wigan Team

So long Wigan Athletic, and thanks for all the fish end of season memories. As Roberto Martinez’s men slip into the Championship, with an unlikely FA Cup under their arm for their efforts, Simon Smith salutes their greatest hits with a hypothetical squad list of players who have excelled at the DW over the last eight years…

After eight years in the Premier League that nobody could have predicted back in 2005, Wigan Athletic will depart the glitz and glamour of the top flight leaving us with the memories of so many exciting but fundamentally flawed teams. I’m not sure which is harder, choosing the creative players to omit or the defenders to include… Nonetheless, here’s an ultimate Wigan XI from the last eight years that reflects the nature of the team: a controversial and uncompromising 3-2-5 to have the purist salivating and the Italian fan crying with rage, sheer rage at the audacity to play so open! Continue reading

Wigan win the FA Cup: a United fan’s report hidden within the City support

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Manchester United supporter Greg Johnson accompanied his City-supporting father to the FA Cup Final to watch Wigan Athletic triumph, tradition fade and football win the day…

Emerging from underground, the first thing that hits you about Wembley is its size, looming impossibly large in the middle-distance, with its craning white arch. Strangely, however, as you approach the stadium it almost begins to feel out of scale, like a dolly zoom warping its 90,000 capacity into a confusingly manageable frame.

Unmistakably large but hardly intimidating, the venue, shrinking in stature with every step, fits the occasion perfectly. Once grand enough to occupy a whole date on the national events calendar, FA Cup Final Day is now FA Cup Final Evening; shunted into the primetime TV slot with the early distraction of an afternoon Premier League fixture to contend with.

I was a Manchester United fan in stealth mode, attending my first fixture at the new Wembley alongside my City supporting father. Aged four he took me to see Denis Irwin, Paul Ince and Eric Cantona at Old Trafford a number of times thanks to spare tickets gained through work. One of those games happened to be the 9-0 dismantling of Ipswich Town – an experience that painted my impressionable, glory-hunting young mind the colour red.

Having accidentally fallen for Manchester City’s main rivals while he introduced me to my love of football, joining him for the game was the least I could do, and besides; father and son, the FA Cup final, Wembley: in many ways this was a dream I’d long wished to realise. Continue reading

This One’s for the Neutrals

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Can we work out who is the Premier League’s ‘most neutral’ team? David Wild puts it to the test…

‘This is one for the neutrals’; English football has thrown this phrase our way an awful lot recently.  If we look at some recent cases from the League and FA Cup we can see in the cup runs of Bradford and Oldham a classic example of a national complex; the celebration of the plucky underdog.

When we see a team performing in a way that we admire our hearts go out to them, they achieve a kind of universal admiration. In these cases the admiration came from both teams performing beyond the expectations of teams of their quality in beating premier league opposition. Continue reading

FA Cup Fifth Round Preview: Luton-Millwall 1985, and all that

Nick Hart, from Millwall fanzine I Left My Heart at Cold Blow Lane, looks at the reaction to the FA Cup Fifth Round draw which pitted Luton Town and Millwall together…

“Luton/Millwall in the FA Cup? ‘Oh good’, says absolutely no policeman in the South of England.” So tweeted the terminally unfunny Piers Morgan when this draw was made. Aw give over Piers, you’re killing us here mate with your funnies … not.

The thing is of course that some fixtures are seared into the national psyche. And the infamous Luton-Millwall 1985 cup quarter-final between the Lions and the Hatters at Kenilworth Road is not so much seared, as branded with a red hot poker into the collective folk-memory.  Continue reading

The Hypocrisy of the FA Cup

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In the aftermath of the Third Round of the FA Cup, James Dutton takes a look at the media coverage which shapes its positioning in the football universe…

The FA Cup has found it difficult to grasp its place in the over-arching landscape of modern football. It sits as a representation of the traditions inherent in English football, a link to the past yet, supposedly, little more.

Continue reading