Thursday, February 09, 2006
Boro 1 Coventry 0
Had to miss this one as I was traveling for work, so can't really comment on it too much. The facts are that Jimmy Floyd continued his good run of form and netted the only goal of the game on 20 minutes to take us through to the fifth round and an away tie against Preston, who overcame Crystal Palace in their own reply. A very welcome result then, albeit one you would normally expect to cruise. On current form though we did well to get past this tie without more egg on our faces, especially considering how well Coventry played in the second half of the first game.Beating teams like Sunderland and Coventry, however, is not enough to restore the confidence we so badly need. They are teams we should be beating blindfold - it is the champions next and that will be an acid test if ever there was one. On the plus side there is surely no better incentive to turn a season around than the ultimate challenge of taking on a team beaten only twice all season in all competitions. There is an outside chance George Boateng will be back, together with James Morrison, and that would provide a huge boost in morale I'm sure.
Taking the FA Cup on it's own merits, we have an excellent chance to reach a second quarter final, and with a home draw there who knows where we could end up? Boro included there are 11 premiership teams left in, but with Liverpool playing Man Utd next not all the big guns will be left standing. If we can regain some form this surely represents our best chance of repeating our adventure in Europe for another year.
My MOTM: I guess Jimmy again, purely for the goal, but also Schwarzer for the clean sheet - he will need to keep that up in following weeks.
