Monday Cannon Fodder: cup magic

The FA Cup weekend was great. It had everything that you’d want from a 3rd Round — giants falling, Cinderella stories, and dramatic finishes. A few matches / results:

• Tottenham 1 - Portsmouth 0: that lot really only put one past the 13th side in League One with a decent number of their first choice players on the pitch.
• Blackpool 4 - Nottingham Forest 1: Charlie Patino’s side, 22nd in the Championship, beat a Premier League side. Yeah, it was Forest, but still.
• Bournemouth 2 - Burnley 4: another Premier League side losing to a Championship one, but it hardly counts. Burnley (1st Champ.) and Bournemouth (16th PL) are only 5 places apart in the pyramid.
• Chesterfield 3 - West Brom 3: the Baggies needed a 93rd minute goal to force a replay against non-league Chesterfield.
• Boreham Wood 1 - Accrington Stanley 1: a second half goal earned non-league Boreham Wood a replay.
• Coventry 3 - Wrexham 4: the Red Dragons led 4-1, which turned out to be important, because 10-man Coventry scored two to make it squeaky bum time for Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s team.
• Sheffield Wednesday 2 - Newcastle 1: the 2nd place team in League One beat the 3rd place team in the Premier League. I guess Eddie Howe got it right against Arsenal because when he sent his side out to actually play football, look what happened.
• Liverpool 2 - Wolves 2: controversial calls both ways saw a tie between two Premier League clubs forced to a replay.
• Cardiff City 2 - Leeds United 2: a wild second half saw Leeds come back from 2-0 down, including a 93rd minute tying goal from 18-year old, senior debutante Sonny Perkins, to force the replay. Cardiff’s Joel Bagan pulled the Luis Suarez — intentional handball on the goal line to stop a ball from going in with his keeper returning the favor by stopping the penalty.
• Aston Villa 1 - Stevenage 2: the 2nd place team in League Two beat Unai Emery’s Premier League side. Stevenage came from behind with goals in the 88th and 90th minute to win.
• Manchester City 4 - Chelsea 0: Graham Potter may not make it through the season. The Blues stink right now.

It’s mildly annoying that Tottenham will have two days more rest than Arsenal ahead of the North London Derby next Sunday because of the FA Cup scheduling. Spurs played on Saturday, Arsenal play today. But there’s not much that can be done about that, just the vagaries of scheduling that the Gunners are in the only match originally scheduled for Monday (Forest Green vs. Birmingham was rescheduled to Monday). It seems as if they could ensure that no team gets more than one day of extra rest, but what do I know.

I’m not sure what, if any, advantage there is to 8 days off compared to 6. It seems as if both should provide more than enough rest and preparation time for the clubs. So it’s more tilting at windmills on my part than anything else. It’s Monday morning, I’m allowed to whine and moan a bit with a full week ahead of me.

Which matches did you watch over the weekend?