Tottenham Hotspur's Roberto Soldado misses sitter * *after and before assisting on two goals, the first and the last in a four goal fightback, (not that we’re going to mention that). The last goal looked like exactly what Pochettino is aiming for. Rose wins the ball near midfield, and passes it in the same touch to Stambouli, who loops his pass over a defender to hit Soldado in stride as he races down the pitch. Soldado then snaps a perfect cross back to Rose as he races towards the keeper, a foot too far for the defender to block, leaving Rose with a tap-in.
With all the comments on Soldado missing a sitter no-one's mentioning the fine goal he did score: Burnleys second.
Now here's a sentence that I didn't expect to be writing at any point soon: Man Of The Match, according to votes compiled by our OS, was Paulinho.
What did Humphrey Bogart say in Casablanca? "Could be the start of a wonderful friendship............!!!!?"
Cambridge hold Utd to draw. Looking at Utd's line up Van Gaal should be livid that they they didn't win this. Didn't watch the game so don't know how it went regards possession etc.
I saw the second half and it was all Utd - 80% possession, but very little created. Cambridge were very committed and organised in defence, I'm thrilled for them. Apparently it will be a £1.5m payday, enough to run their team for a year.
Thanks OS & SD, I have 2 workmates who will be well ticked off . BTW did Dominic Ball get any game time?
As YV has pointed out on another thread, none of the PL's top ten are yet through to the 5th round - and five are already definitely out. The gap in wealth between the PL gets wider and wider, but does the gap in quality or is it narrowing? The PL increasingly,looks to foreign imports. So what happens to the decent, but not top class English talent? it seems that many have finished up in League One. Ex -Spurs Mark Yeates at Bradford is quite a skilful player, who had a big hand in Chelsea's demise today. Jose Baxter of Sheff Utd was hailed as a wonderkid at Everton. Danny Philliskirk of Oldham was the Chelsea youth team captain a few years ago, but never got a first team chance. And the list goes on. Maybe these type of players are half bad, but just never got a chance?
There are a lot of ways to level the playing field despite a big disaprity in footballing ability. In general an organised team that places importance on numbers at the back and physical play are always capable of getting an upset if they get a bit of luck. Add in other factors like big stars not being motivated, playing at home on a bad pitch that you're used to and the opposition aren't then you've got a real chance. They weren't all factors in every upset today but this round really has been exceptional for upsets and we've still got more games to play. Generally quality shows through but it's never as easy as it is on paper. If United played a season in League 2 I don't think there's a question that they would comfortably win the league but that's not what the top sides in our league are set up to do, they set up to beat other top sides. I can't even begin to imagine how Chelsea managed to blow a 2 goal lead at home against Bradford though, it couldn't have been made easier for them to go through at that point!
City went out because of their silly friendly, which I'm quite pleased about. Clubs might take things a little more seriously in future. Lots of other strange results, though. Weakened teams will have taken a toll on some, but facing worse teams with better morale and decent organisation can be tricky.
