Paul Hurst’s high-flyers have been defying expectations all season and will offer a stern FA Cup test for a side with both eyes on Premier League safetyA funny thing happened when Shrewsbury Town played at Wigan on Boxing Day. The visitors earned a goalless draw to end a run of five straight wins by the League One leaders, though that was not entirely unexpected. What was odd was that when the home crowd chanted: “We are top of the league,” the away fans responded with: “We are staying up.”At that precise point Shrewsbury were second in the table, as they are still, about to reach the same points total by new year as they managed in the whole of last...
The new £75m central defender had a comfortable bow in the FA Cup third-round win over Everton at Anfield and even managed to score the late winnerA sledgehammer to crack a nut was the expression that came to mind as Liverpool’s new £75m defender made his debut against a side with only one goal in their last four games and no shots on target in either of their last two home matches. Everton supporters were clinging to the slender hope that Jürgen Klopp might have taken a risk in throwing Virgil van Dijk straight into the heat of a Merseyside derby.There were few worries on that score, even before the centre-half scored the winning goal five minutes from the end....
The Premier League champions visit in the FA Cup on Saturday but Norwich’s main concern after upheaval on and off the pitch is to get back to the top flight before the parachute payments stopAre Norwich City having a bad season? It seems hard to argue they are having a good one; after 26 games they are 13th in the Championship, nine points off the play-offs, one place and two points behind Ipswich Town. Next up, the not altogether welcoming prospect of Chelsea in the FA Cup on Saturday.Lowlights include a run of eight matches without a win from October to December, a 4-0 mauling at Millwall, defeats at Carrow Road by Sunderland and Brentford and only 14 home goals,...
The magic may have gone for some but the old competition is a reminder that we were all kids, and underdogs, onceIt started in the boardroom at Gloucester City. I was a bit lost among the excited adults all around me and the tea and sandwiches and smell of smoke (pre-ban), but I could tell from the tone of the chairman’s voice this was a very serious business. “I think you know what it would mean to this club to go on a proper Cup run,” he told my dad, Leroy, who was the manager of the then Southern Premier League team.For Gloucester City “a proper Cup run” means making it to the first round and beyond; a chance to...
The former Everton captain Kevin Ratcliffe reminisces about past FA Cup ties between his club and Liverpool as the teams prepare to face each other in the third round at Anfield on FridayMy first experience of a Merseyside derby was also my first win over Liverpool – the FA Cup fourth round tie of January 1981 – but it is remembered for different reasons. We won 2-1 with Imre Varadi scoring our second goal and he celebrated by running straight over to the paddock at Goodison Park where the Evertonians would usually be. He didn’t realise that, because it was an FA Cup tie and Liverpool had been given more tickets than usual, the paddock had been given over to...