Tonight was a night for the FA Cup fifth round replays with four exciting ties being played. There was plenty of goals and even more drama as four teams headed to the Quarter Finals.
Most expected Stoke City to crumble against Manchester City and some bookies were pricing Manchester City at 10/1 to win the cup before this game even began. But Stoke showed they were no push overs here.
Kitson opened the scoring for them with just eleven minutes to go and when he did the fans in red and white in the Britannia Stadium must have thought they had won the game. Manchester City pegged them back almost immediately though with Adebayor knocking the ball to Bellamy who finished and squared things up.
Adebayor was then shown his second yellow card and sent off as this game went into extra-time. A Stoke special then gave the home side the lead when Shawcross nodded in a long throw-in, and Stoke added another in the first half of extra-time when Tuncay drove a shot under Given.
Stoke fans began to chant “you’re getting sacked in the morning” to Man City boss Mancini as they strode into the Quarter Finals.
Tottenham struggled in front of goal when they played Bolton at The Reebok but tonight they had their shooting boots on and walked away with a fantastic 4-0 victory. As predicted in an article on Monday Pavlyuchenko was the man to score the first goal for them (a bet I advised but wasn’t smart enough to take) on twenty-three minutes. Tottenham then watched as Jaaskelainen and O’Brien scored Own Goals, before Pavlyuchenko added his second and Tottenham’s fourth with three minutes left to play.
Aston Villa are competing with Tottenham for fourth spot in the league and could also now still compete against them in the cup after they beat Crystal Palace 3-1. Agbonlahor nodded them into lead before half-time, but top man Ambrose gave Palace some hope when he scored a penalty to square things up. The hope didn’t last long though and a double from Carew sent Villa into the Quarter Finals.
In the all Championship tie between West Brom and Reading a goal from Koren kicked things off with just six minutes gone but this was followed by Kebe who squared things up for Reading before the ten minute mark.
Koren scored again with a twenty yard strike just after half-time and it looked like West Brom were going through as they settled on this scoreline. Reading never gave up though and with the allotted ninety minutes played Brain Howard nicked an equalizer to send this game into Extra-time. With five minutes of ET played Sigurdsson hit a shot from twenty-five yards to claim a Quarter Final place for Reading who have now beaten three top sides to get there.
On Monday I did a summary of these games in an article titled “FA Cup Fifth Round Replays: Summaries And Predictions,” writing down my predictions for each. As an avid gambler I had a keen eye on the results and was therefore slightly annoyed when only three of the four came in (all but for Reading’s last minute goal). My commiseration’s to those who took the bets, but you should still be on a profit nevertheless, just not as big as the one I hoped for:) Keep your eyes peeled for future predictions.
