For the second time this year City will play Scunthorpe in a cup competition after being drawn away in the 4th round of the FA Cup. It is easy to be overconfident given the 5-1 victory in the Liquid Cup, but realistically City should be in the 5th round draw after the games the weekend of the 23rd-24th.
Must admit I was expecting the gods of coincidence to be smiling on the club and for Eriksson's Notts County to be pulled out of the hat along with City. Would have been just so perfect.
One team of course who will not be in the hat are Manchester United rather sensationally knocked out by Leeds United. I miss Leeds as a top flight team and really wish they were back in the Premier League. Still seems strange that Leeds beating Manchester United would be deemed a huge upset, but given the league positions I guess it is.
That upset really saved what was a pretty boring 3rd Round this year. No wonderful non league stories to spice up the round. Not one other result that you could point to as a surprise. West Ham nearly contributed however probably better for them, to use the old cliche, that they get to concentrate on the league rather than beat Arsenal and move on to the next round. It's an over used cliche, but it has always struck me that there is some truth to it so would just kill if getting knocked out by Leeds helped Manchester United keep close to Chelsea on the league.
Speaking of Leeds you have to say that the glamour tie of the 4th Round is their trip to White Hart Lane to face Tottenham. Strange indeed when a first tier against third tier is designated as such, but there is nothing else that comes close. A quick look at the ties shows that at most only 12 Premier League teams will make it through to the 5th Round. Pending replays there is only one guaranteed Premier League match up, Stoke vs. Arsenal, so it is not unreasonable to expect more Premier League clubs to fall.
Given just a smidgen of luck we could see enough Premier League clubs fall to give City a real chance at deep progress in the competition.
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Wallace Poulter is an award winning video game producer, designer, industry consultant and writer. He has been a football fanatic since the day he moved in next door to Brian Clough. "Cloughie" being the acknowledged genius that he was promptly moved out and went to manage Derby. A serviceable senior school left-back in his youth, Poulter played one season of Sunday league football as a striker proving conclusively that he was a serviceable senior school left-back! Today Poulter remains involved with football as a licensed referee and most recently as a consultant on a Football MMO.
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