Pre-Match
I’ve got a huge bottle of cider chilling and am looking forward to an enjoyable evening. It was no surprise that Roy made major changes to the side to face Northampton but I’m confident that we’ll win comfortably tonight. The Cobblers will be going for it as it’s their one real chance for glory and the fact that they saw off Bolton in the last round is warning enough that we shouldn’t take this game lightly, but I think we’ll win and win well with Healy getting a goal or two and maybe Chops coming on for a late goal. Final score 4-1.

First Half
Not much happened in the first fifteen minutes apart from a couple of weak headers on target from Murphy and Collins and Northampton appeared to be doing more pressing than us with Andy Holt repeatedly getting the better of Bardsley. We didn’t get our first corner till the 20 th minute but almost immediately Larkin took advantage of our leaky defence to put Northampton one up and I hoped that would give us the kick up the arse we needed to get going. I hoped in vain as Northampton were much more comfortable in midfield and continued to win most headers in our penalty area. Things improved around the half-hour mark with Leadbitter’s deflected shot going just wide. At this point one of the guys from a band that I manage called me on an important matter and for five minutes I had to try to talk with him while keeping one ear on Radio Newcastle. Anyway, Reid was our most enterprising player and we pressed forward a lot more but Fielding made two quality saves as frustration grew. It was still 0-1 at half-time and we couldn’t argue with that. I still thought that with a good rollicking combined with a few substitutions we could turn things around and win the game. In the previous round Forest had also had the better of the first half.

Second Half
Richardson and Chops had replaced Edwards and Healy when we emerged for round two and I fancied us to get a quick one back. Murphy and Chops both had decent efforts in the first few minutes but then things cooled again. By the hour mark Northampton were in control again and sounded the more likely side to score while we clearly had a dose of the jitters. Whitehead was playing far too deep and our midfield weren’t getting a grip at all. In the 77 th Stokes came on for Leadbitter and it seemed the best we could hope for was extra-time. Well, that feeling lasted for about three minutes till, as Nos was off the pitch, Guttridge put Northampton 2-0 up as our defence stood around and watched. Nos didn’t return but we couldn’t even use that as an excuse as we just weren’t up for this while Northampton clearly were. Fans were streaming out of the ground till, surprise, surprise, Stokes pulled one back in the 85 th and faint hope reappeared. We put more pressure on and in the final minute of stoppage-time we got a corner and Fulop was encouraged to move up to make up the numbers before Stokes headed our second and we got out of jail.

Extra-Time
We were down to ten men, unless Nos was going to make a return, while Northampton still had two unused subs with sharpshooter Akinfenwa among those on the bench. I felt that we couldn’t lose it now and if there were precious few positives to say about this performance we’d shown character to keep going to the whistle yet again. My computer decided to do something nutty at this point or, more likely, it was me and I lost the live Radio Newcastle commentary and then had to rely on a combination of Radio 5 Live and safc.com minute-by-minute reports to keep in touch with the match. There was precious little to chew on but the game was clearly going from end to end and the word ‘scramble’ was being used far too much for my liking. It was still 2-2 as the final fifteen minutes kicked off but the scraps of news I was getting made it clear that Northampton were dominating. I continued to slurp cider and hope for the best. The next thing I saw on my screen was ‘Full time. Penalties’ and I sat in utter isolation as I awaited our fate. The next thing it said was ‘The two sides prepare for penalties’. Yeah, thanks… I tried logging out and in again to try and get the audio back but only succeeded in not being able to get the site back at all. Finally, amid the banter of Danny Baker’s ‘606’ there was a brief mention that we’d won the penalty shoot-out.

Well, we got through but I don’t think any of us could have imagined that we’d make such heavy weather of it. Anyway, I need a lie-down... see you at Villa.

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