Up for the Cup, Round 4

This won't take long.

Preston North End came to the CG on a cold and very wet Friday night well organised, seemingly determined not to lose. You can't blame them. How often do a League 1 side get to the 5th Round of the FA Cup? So they were, at worst, trying to get a replay and take us back to Deepdale and dispose of us like they did Ipswich in Round 3. At best, they were hoping to keep us quiet for three quarters of the game then go for a goal. And it nearly worked.

Billy showed that he wanted to progress against his former charges by selecting a strong team. Eric Lichaj came back from injury in place of Dan Harding and Majewski came in for the suspended (the first of two games for 10 yellow cards)Lansbury.

The first half was like attack against defence on the training ground. Forest constantly scythed through the Lillywhites defence and tried to walk the ball into the net. Or simply blasted the ball at the 'keeper or wide the goal altogether. Preston did have two efforts in the first half, from one of which I thought Garner was sure to score, but he put it wide of the goal.

Second half was, at first, somewhat similar. The large crowd, over 26,000, were getting more and more frustrated as Forest continued to carve the Preston defence open without getting into a shooting position. Preston and Forest started to make changes, bringing on attacking players to try and avoid a replay, but it was to no avail. Preston had several speculative long range efforts stopped somehow by Darlow and our attackers contrived to put crosses into the box just for the fun of it as no one was there to tap the ball into the net.

At last it all ended. Preston fans, who were in good heart and voice the whole game, responded to the final whistle as if they had actually won the Cup and Forest fans rushed off to try and find excuses for probably the worst game at the CG this season. Did Preston force us into this display or did we have an off-day? I'm not that bothered one way or the other.

The replay is at Preston on Wednesday, 5 February. There were only two games drawn in the whole of the Fourth Round, so ITV will be taking one replay on Tuesday and BT Sport taking us on the Wednesday which is just as well because we have a game on the Sunday before (against Yeovil) instead of the Saturday as originally scheduled because of, again, the demands of TV, this time Sky. We originally should have played Watford on Wednesday, but Sky wanted to shift the game to Thursday which meant moving the Yeovil game back to Sunday. There is no problem the way things have panned out. The precious players and managers these days moan about fixture congestion, whereas managers of Cloughie's generation would just remark it's better to play than train (or something like that).

Anyway, which ever day it is, I just can't afford to go. We have the Blackpool game on the Saturday 8th and the re-arranged Huddersfield game on the Tuesday, both away.

Incidentally, on the subject of my 92, I didn't manage to get to Fulham when I went to London last year, so I am hoping that we beat Preston and Fulham beat Sheffield United to set up a visit to Craven Cottage. Though if the other result happens I won't be too sad as then we would meet Nigel Clough again, now manager of the Blades having moved on since he was sacked by his former club. Of course, we must beat Preston first, but before that there are two big games in the Championship.