Semi-detached from reality ~The West Brom manager, interviewed before the game on Radio 5, said "Whatever happens, there'll be a new name on the cup." Huh?
One of the small irritations about Mowbray (who I admire strongly) is that he doesn't half put his verbal foot in it on occasion, the worst being his warning to Roy Keane and Sunderland in last year's promotion battle that he'd 'feel the pressure' and he'd come a cropper if he didn't. Yeah. Thanks, Tone.
I can't lie. If you take away the occasion's trappings - the atmos, the pre-match build up - it wasn't the best semi-final of all time, and was humdrum in huge stretches (then again, shite semis and the finals themelves appear to be a growing tradition in the Cup). Yes, we'd pleasingly dominated, but lacked - cliche alert - a cutting edge. I could remonstrate about Baros's handball, but, as Mowbray himself admitted, it's all academic now.
To be honest, I was - cliche alert - totally gutted after Kanu's goal and switched off the telly for five minutes, only to turn it back on again and watch with a heavy heart (and look away for many a moment), although had Koren's bar-hit drive gone in, or had Miller's clip found its target, I might be feeling different today. As it is...
And, by the way, a huge 'fuck off and die' to the Observer's Paul Wilson, who reduced our participation in this game to a curt, dismissive footnote - I sensed he clearly knew which team he was going to back even before the game started. To reduce our role even further, they even threw in a David James column in which he told us how peachy everything was down Redknapp Way (on the 'we dominated' point, he said in his article that he couldn't remember much about the game - make your fucking mind up, you twat!). Congratulations to Portsmouth (even if Redknapp had the benefit of victory to afford to be magnanimous, he was courteous to Albion in any case).
Congrats to Cardiff. Best of.
Commiserations to Barnsley. Although I'd sincerely like any manager, whose relegated - threatened squad can be able to beat Liverpool and Chelsea, to lock them in a room and browbeat them to demand, if they can defeat Benitez's and Grant's teams, why the fuck can't they turn it on like that in the Championship?.
Posted by ian.64 08-04-2008 Go to thread |
