Another thing the Vincent Tan era has seen is the arrival of the “meaningless” FA Cup tie. The last fourteen years have seen a variety of Third Round FA Cup ties that did not live long in the memory as a variety of City shadow sides, more often than not, made an early exit from the competition.
Tonight’s tie at Sheffield United was probably the first match City had played on a Thursday with a 7 o clock kick off in their history and won’t live long in the memory either, but at least the 150 or so hardy souls who travelled up to Yorkshire in freezing conditions got to see their team win 1-0. This time it was the Blades fans that had the deflating feeling of wondering what they were doing watching their team play so listlessly as the unforced errors mounted up.
It’s unusual for City to win an FA Cup game these days, but with three unbeaten and encouraging performances behind them going into the match, it continues a sense of momentum being built. Three of these matches have been played away from home against teams that were in the top six of the Championship when we played them and that can only add to confidence levels within the squad for the league battles to come.
Of course, it was nothing near the Sheffield team that beat City pretty comfortably on their own pitch in the last match before Christmas. Manager Chris Wilder made seven changes from the side that won at Watford on the weekend and with many regular selections suffering with injuries, there was a smattering of youngsters involved.
In saying that, it was seven changes from the team which drew at Middlesbrough as well for City as only Jesper Daland, Cian Ashford, Rubin Colwill and Ollie Tanner remained. Omer Riza gave Ethan Horvarth a rare start in goal, Ronan Kpakio was at right wing back, with Tanner on the left, Joel Bagan and Will Fish were in a back three, with Perry Ng accompanying Joe Ralls, who was making his 400th appearance for the club, in midfield and Kion Etete was in senior team action for the first time this season up front.
Etete only played the first forty five minutes, which I assume was always the plan, rather than down to more injury problems, and featured prominently in the opening stages as City took the initiative.
The former Spurs man did pretty well in general, but will probably be disappointed not to have found the net from at least one of two presentable chances in the opening six minutes. For the first, he got his head to a fine, early cross by Colwill, but goalkeeper Adam Davies got down to turn the ball aside. Within a couple of minutes, Ashford did brilliantly to flick past Jamal Baptiste and race clear in the inside right channel. Just like he did at Watford for the winning goal, Ashford had the presence of mind to play what should have been the perfect pass for another assist only for Colwill to take it away from the better placed Etete with a heavy first touch. From making a mess of things, Colwill then did well to tee up Etete with a clever back heel, but when the shot finally came in, it flew a couple of yards high and wide.
That second chance especially should have been scored by one of the two players involved and as the home side began to push forward more, you wondered if City’s best oportunities had come and gone already.
However, that was to reckon without Ashford who came up with a decisive goal that was all his own work as he robbed Blades captain Rhys Norrington-Davies, then had the pace to keep far enough ahead of the Welsh international and take the ball into the penalty area before calmly side footing past the advancing Davies.
I may be wrong here, but I think this was the first goal of this type that we’ve scored all season (Callum Robinson’s goal at Hull was similar, but he didn’t need to be that quick as he was played into plenty of space). By that I mean one of our players was able to get clear of the last man and once in behind the defence he took the ball on to score – we’ve not had the sort of players to do that until now.
To be honest, Sheffield were so out of sorts going forward that, despite getting more careless in the second half with their passing, City held on to their lead with few alarms until the game was almost over.
Horvarth showed the usual limitations with his kicking, but was safe and assured in his handling when tested by Louie Marsh, Rhian Brewster and Ryan One and with all three starting centrebacks doing a steady job (plus Tom Davies, who slotted in there as part of a reshuffle caused by an injury to Kpakio which forced him off at half time as Ng switched to wing back and Bagan moved into midfield).
Etete’s replacement was Irish forward Luke Pearce who returned from his loan spell at Sligo Rovers last month. It was a first look at the ex Southampton player for most City fans, myself included, and he showed up well despite not getting a lot of quality service in a scrappy second half in which both teams’ passing got more slipshod.
City were now playing more on the break, but the chances were still there for them as Bagan and Colwill worked a good one two only for the former to put his left foot shot well over. Tanner then chest controlled an Ng cross really well before sending his shot a couple of yards over, Ashford who, as Nathan Blake said in commentary, seems to always make the right decisions, forced Davies into another diving save and then Ralls’ precise effort after being well set up by Pearce hit the side netting.
Before City’s win was confirmed though, the home team came up with what was by some distance their best effort of the night as Harrison Burrows beat a couple of players and then shot against an upright from twenty yards with Horvarth well beaten.
So, one hundred years after a single goal, this time for Sheffield, separated these two teams in the FA Cup Final, City gained a win to match the 3-1 triumph on the same ground in the Third Round back in 1972. We were struggling in the second tier then as well, but Sheffield were in the top flight due to that notorious 5-1 win over us some nine months earlier – that giant killing is another game which doesn’t tend to get remembered much among older fans as attention focuses on that earlier hammering we took. However, with a first clean sheet since our draw at West Brom almost three months ago to celebrate, we can now focus on who we’ll get next for a few days and our win means that the home league game with Hull scheduled for February 8 will have to be rearranged.
One last thing, with many of the regular under 21 team on duty tonight, it was a much more inexperienced side than normal which travelled to Ipswich yesterday and from the highlights I saw, it was something of a case of men against boys as a much bigger home side won by 5-1 to suggest that the likely loaning out of some of our young professionals will see us having a less successful second half to the season than we did first. The only good news was that there was another good finish by Mannie Barton to get us back to 2-1 going into the second half, but this was an afternoon when we were well beaten by a better team.
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