For all the time I’ve been running this site I’ve felt that we were due another FA Cup win. We’re still waiting for us to add to our eleven FA Cup wins, the last of which was 2004.
For all the time I’ve been running this site we’ve also been the club with the most FA Cup wins to our name (eleven) but last year saw this record equalled by Arsenal whilst we were dumped out in this round by Swansea 2-1 at Old Trafford.
Of course, facing a League One side as we do today, albeit away from home, we’d expect to progress a little further this time around but we all thought something similar before we were knocked out of the Capital One Cup by the MK Dons earlier in the season.
I do hope LvG fully embraces this tournament – it does represent our only realistic chance of silverware this season and if the season were to end with us back in the Champions League and an FA Cup win to our name then that would surely be seen as a successful debut season for him and a generally very good season for us.
There seems little point looking at the form of both teams going into this one – if the FA Cup has taught us anything down the years it is that anything can, and does, happen every year.
However, it cannot be ignored that Yeovil really are struggling at the moment – they sit right at the foot of League One and have actually only won one of their twelve league home games all season and are currently on a run of five straight home defeats.
We, of course, whilst generally becoming slightly more consistent of late, are still capable of shooting ourselves in the foot with some of our more shambolic defending and I have little doubt that Yeovil will be launching the ball into our box at every opportunity in an attempt to capitalise on the ensuing chaos.
What remains to be seen at the time of writing is the team LvG will put out for this one. We are in the busiest time of the season and several key players have had a busy couple of weeks and are surely due a rest this afternoon and I think a couple of the subs used in our last match against Stoke could provide some clues (Januzaj, Herrera and Rafael spring to mind).
This should also be a chance for Falcao to gain some much-needed match fitness and a chance for young James Wilson to show what he can do.
All in all, I simply cannot believe that we are going to crash out of another cup competition in the opening stages against such vastly inferior opposition – we’ve surely had our stinker for this season – and I can see us running out fairly comfortable winners here this afternoon.
