Stoke set sights on semi-final spot
Reuters - Thursday 04 March 2010, 02:00
LONDON - Stoke City fans have had
precious little to celebrate in 122 years but victory at Chelsea
on Sunday would put them one game away from reaching the FA Cup
final for the first time while reviving some painful memories.
Having already knocked out Manchester City and Arsenal this
season another upset against the holders is entirely possible
and the Stamford Bridge clash has set the Potteries
abuzz with nostalgia.
Stoke were founder members of the Football League in 1888
yet their only-ever trophy is the 1972 League Cup when they beat
Chelsea in the final.
That success came in their all-too brief "glory years" and
was sandwiched by two controversial extra-time FA Cup semi-final
defeats by Arsenal that still hurt to this day.
In 1971 Stoke led 2-0 at Hillsborough only for Arsenal to
make it 2-2 with a penalty after a then-unheard of five minutes
of injury time and win the replay 2-0 en route to the Double.
The following year they drew again - despite Arsenal having
to play the last 15 minutes with striker John Radford in goal
after an injury to Bob Wilson.
Stoke led in the replay only for Arsenal to level and then
win the game with a goal by Radford. Local legend has it that
Radford was miles offside but that the linesman mistook a white-coated programme seller for a white-shirted Stoke defender and
allowed the goal.
"It beggars belief," former Stoke winger Terry Conroy
recently said of the incident. "I look back on my career with no
regrets apart from those two games - it would have meant so much
to the club and the area."
Stoke never reached even the quarter-finals again until this
season and although the Cup has nothing like the prestige it
carried in those days, victory on Sunday would be huge.
At 83 years Reading's wait for a sixth-round appearance has
been far longer and the only non-Premier League side left in the
competition will hope to match their 1927 achievement of
reaching the semis by beating visiting Aston Villa on Sunday.
Despite struggling near the foot of the Championship
they have accounted for Liverpool, Burnley and
West Bromwich Albion this season.
Villa, beaten in the League Cup final by Manchester United
last weekend, will be desperate to secure a return to Wembley,
where both semi-finals are played.
Portsmouth, adrift in the Premier League and in debt-ridden
administration, can briefly forget their woes when they host
Birmingham City in the first of the quarter-finals on Saturday.
The 2008 winners had a morale-boosting 4-1 win over local
rivals Southampton in the last round and a place in the
semi-finals would be a fitting reward for the fans who have been
so impressive despite the chronic mismanagement of their club.
Fulham host eight-times winners Tottenham Hotspur in an
intriguing all-London clash on Saturday when Roy
Hodgson's improving side will hope to do better than at the same
stage last season when they were thrashed 4-0 at home by
Manchester United.