City were hardly in great form then as they travelled up to Middlesbrough for their FA Cup Quarter Final. The Premiership team had scraped home in extra time in a replay with Sheffield United thanks to a freakish own goal by Paddy Kenny and this had been the latest in a series of FA Cup matches of theirs that the BBC had decided to show live. Frankly, Boro had looked a pretty poor outfit in all of them, but I couldn't see anything in City's recent performances to suggest an upset. Perhaps though, I should have paid more attention to the two Quarter Finals that had already taken place which had seen Portsmouth somehow beat Man United 1-0 at Old Trafford and Barnsley completely deservedly triumph over Chelsea by the same scoreline - there was certainly something different going on in the 2007/08 FA Cup competition!
City's team showed three changes with Ramsey, Rae and Hasselbaink coming back for Simeca, Sinclair and Thompson and, for the first five minutes or so anyway, it looked like it might be a long afternoon for the team as Middlesbrough started confidently in front of a virtual full house most of whom appeared to think that a place in the Semi Final was a formality. However, once City had established a foothold in the match, there was only one team in it and it wasn't Boro!
The Premiership side had already had a scare from a Capaldi long throw when he hurled another one in on nine minutes, this time they half cleared the immediate danger but McPhail jumped for the ball and it hit his hand from where it bounced to Whittingham about sixteen yards out and the man whose early goal had put City on the way to their win against Wolves with an early goal obliged again here as, surrounded by six defenders, he shifted the ball on to his right foot, created a bit of space for himself and curled a great shot in off the post with Schwarzer well beaten.
Apart from a shot by recored signing Alves that Enckelman pushed aside, Boro had nothing to offer in reply for the rest of the first half whereas City could have scored another three or four. As it was they settled for the one when Johnson headed in a Whittingham free kick on twenty three minutes, but Hasselbaink really should have done better with a header two minutes after Whittingham's opener after a fluent move down City's left opened up the home defence again, Johnson had another good headed chance and Parry wasn't far away with a couple of shots from distance.
You didn't need the "experts" in the studio to tell you that City had looked like the Premiership side in the first half but it was still great to hear the likes of Hansen, Shearer and Barnsley manager saying it about a City display in an FA Cup Quarter Final!
If it had been against the likes of Colchester and City were 2-0 up at the break after playing so well, I would have thought victory was inevitable, but Middlesbrough had to show their Premiership quality in the second half didn't they? Well, in the event, they did have most of the possession and territory for the remaining forty five minutes, but they did virtually nothing with it and you got the feeling that City were happy just to sit back and protect their lead. In the commentary box Messrs Pearce and Lawrenson seized on every straw that they could find to try and generate a sense of drama that suggested a dramatic comeback was imminent, but they failed - the game had become a bit boring such was City's superiority!
Indeed, if they had wanted to chase more goals you thought they could have got them - there was a moment around the hour mark when McPhail dribbled around a defender so easily to set up another half chance when I blurted out the words "were f*cking murdering them!" and we were!
The match finished 2-0 and City were in the Semi Finals, in truth it was one of those games where every City player turned in a fine performance, but for me the performances of the two centre backs, the so impressive Aaron Ramsey (it was this game that transformed him from a prospect known to only City fans and staff and professionals within the game to the "most sought after player outside the Premiership") and my man of the match, Peter Whittingham. This was a game that I wish I had been there to see in the flesh because the team's performance had been as good as I can remember them turning in in a so called big match, but television wasn't a bad alternative and believe me the recording of the game has had plenty of viewing since!
That night the final Semi Final place was claimed when West Brom defied the trend of each Quarter Final tie producing a shock when they won at league One side Bristol Rovers 5-1. The draw for the Semi Finals took place the following day and, despite Barnsley's fantastic wins over Liverpool and Chelsea, they were definitely the team I was hoping City would be drawn against and so it turned out to be - the two favourites Poretsmouth and West Brom would face each other and City were given an outstanding chance to reach a first FA Cup Final in 81 years.
The days following the Middlesbrough win were certainly momentous ones for the club as the law suit brought against the club by Langston was heard in London. Much of Langstons case was made up of dry, technical matter that supporters at the court who were relaying details to message board users found pretty boring while City's defence caught the headlines with their claim that they could prove that Sam Hammam was the man behind Langston if the matter ever got to the High Court - this piece that appeared in the Echo summarises the proceedings and sets out the decisions the the judge, who promised a verdict within a week, had to make.
http://tinyurl.co.uk/cqzb
It was against this background that the clamour for Semi Final tickets started and the decision to hold both games at the new Wembley Stadium only seemed to increase the demand. A total of 33,000 tickets were allocated to supporters of each club, but the early signs were that this would not be enough as far as City were concerned! Not unreasonably, Ambassadors, season ticket holders and members, in that order, were to be given priority by the club, but people who did not fall into these catergories were given an opportunity to buy tickets when they were told that if they were able to produce a ticket stub from the club's next home match, against Hull, they would be next in line in the queue for a ticket.
The Hull match was put back a day to help out the side who had been performing their heroics at Middlesbrough only a few days earlier and there was an announced second biggest crowd of the season of 17,555 there to see them. Mind you, how many of them were there to watch City take the lead that night is definitely open to debate because there were reports of people going to the ground and ensuring they had a ticket for the match and then going straight back home again while others were still queuing up outside because the goal arrived after only forty odd seconds as Steve McPhail received a Capaldi pass and hooked a shot over Myhill for one ot the Ninian Park goals of the season!
For twenty minutes or so City dominated against in form oppoenents who would have their own great day out at Wembley later in the season and if Thompson had not been foiled by a good save, they might have gone on to win comfortably, City's cause was not been helped when Kevin McNaughton succumbed to one of his intermittent hamstring strains just before half time, but, at least, this gave the opportunity for fellow hamstring victim Joe Ledley to make his return to first team action in his place. However, not surprisingly given the work the side had put in three days earlier the game turned into something of a backs to the wall struggle with the visitors tending to have the better of things throughout to the extent that visiting supporters would have returned home thinking that their sides 1-0 defeat was a harsh one.
Quite often when a lower to middle ranked side goes on a good FA Cup run, their league results suffer (Semi Final opponents Barnsley, who had been promotion contenders, really fell away in this respect), but City's battling win served to confirm what became clear over the next few weeks as they went on an unbeaten run before the big day out at Wembley on 6 April. Over the coming games, City players made clear their intentions of taking the fight for a Play Off place as far as they could. To be honest, I thought they had left themselves with too much to do, but, the truth was that there was still a top six place very much up for grabs - after their awful February, the win over Hull left them team in eleventh place, but just three points short of Ipswich in sixth place.
That being the case, an away match with a Colchester side who were in danger of becoming cast adrift at the bottom of the table represented a must win game. For a while it all went swimmingly for a City side with Blake in at right back for McNaughton - Paul Parry scored the latest in a pretty long of outstanding City goals in 2007/08 on eleven minute when he turned his marker and placed a great shot from twenty five yards past home keeper Gerken. The team had been making a habit of scoring early on in recent games, but, just as against Hull, they spent the rest of the match under pressure. Whilst they could claim that the sending off of Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink for a flying challenge on Gerken around the hour mark turned the game, in truth they had allowed a spirited home side back into the game well before that and when Jackson scored the game's second high quality goal after seventy one minutes to equalise for Colchester, it was no more than they deserved.
All things considered, City did pretty well to hold on to their point as Colchester piled on the pressure in the closing minutes, but, 1-1 draws with teams heading for League One was not good enough as, not for the first or last time during the season, the team came up short on the ground of one of the Championship's poorest teams.
TBC