The final word on the FA Cup defeat falls to columnist Giles Smith who, tonight at the Bridge, is in search of goal therapy.


Ah, the romance of the FA Cup! Experiencing the humiliation. Watching your team of highly-paid international superstars get its reputation shoved right up it by a struggling Championship team on a cow-field pitch. Knowing that, for at least a week, you'll be hiding behind bushes to avoid your Tottenham supporting postman. It's what it's all about, isn't it?

Well, everyone else seems to be pretty excited about it, anyway. Personally, I could take a little less romance at the moment. I'm not saying romance in itself is an altogether bad thing. I'm just saying I like my romance a little less romantic, if at all possible.

The most irksome aspect of Saturday's little upset was the sense that we hadn't just lost to Barnsley (which, up to a point, one just has to be ready to take, in the deliberately haphazard spirit of the competition), but the sense that we had lost the FA Cup final as well, all in the same wind-blown and slightly unimaginative moment.

Manchester United, after all, had gone out earlier in the day, in faintly comical circumstances boding little good for Sir Alex Ferguson's blood pressure, and, no disrespect to Portsmouth, Cardiff and West Brom but? actually, disrespect to Portsmouth, Cardiff and West Brom: over two remaining ties at Wembley, I think we would have won it. Even in this, 'the year of the underdog' (copyright, all newspapers). Or let me put it another way: I don't expect to see the FA Cup look so winnable, from so far out, again in my lifetime. So it's a huge opportunity missed.

But there you go, and we're back to the old magic of the Cup again. In the opposition's first venture over the half-way line for approximately 47 minutes, some big lump of a striker who hasn't scored since September gets on the end of a hanging cross, and subsequently every time we try and get anywhere near the penalty area to equalise there's either six players in the way or a tractor.

At which point, I get texted by a Liverpool fan, saying 'At least we deserved to beat them.' And then Gabby Logan, on the radio, congratulates a Barnsley player on having 'outplayed' us. And, of course, because you're the supporter of a big club that has lost to a small one, these are not arguments you can even begin to get involved in without looking totally ridiculous, so you just have to walk away, smiling with all the dignity you can muster.

Even so, romance, eh? Doesn't it do funny things to people's perspectives?

Further proof: on the radio the other day they were discussing whether this was the best FA Cup ever. To which the only rational answer is: no, of course it isn't. In fact, by almost any standards you care to mention, it's about the worst. There have been no great contests, the early stages of the competition were stained by the shocking indifference of middle-to-low ranking Premier League clubs, such as Reading, and the standard of football across the competition has been virtually medieval (I'm including Chelsea in this, by the way.)

Still to come: two semi-finals in front of, one imagines, a fairly serious number of empty seats, and then the 'showcase occasion that everybody wants', apparently, though one looks forward to seeing how the BBC and Sky cope with stimulating the national interest in (let's assume) a Portsmouth v. Cardiff final.

The BBC, of course, were going apoplectic on Saturday with the romance of it all. 'Only the FA Cup produces stories like these,' and so on. It felt a bit rich, coming from the channel that declined to bring the nation Havant & Waterlooville at Liverpool in favour of safely screening an all-Premiership tie between us and Wigan. The BBC, one would suggest, only believe in the romance of the FA Cup when they are absolutely obliged to do so, i.e. as of last Saturday evening at about 7.00pm, when the last of the big clubs went out.

Of course, the great comfort of football is that, soon after misfortune, something else comes along to take your mind off it - in this case, tonight's home Premier League fixture, which, by some benign coincidence of the calendar, gives the players an opportunity to exercise their frustration on the worst-performing side in the league. May there be goals, and many of them, is all I can say. Sorry, Derby. But that's the romance of the FA Cup.