A wet evening, a slick pitch and two committed teams and suddenly the FA Cup doesn’t seem in quite such a troubled state. A remarkable tie, played at remarkable pace, stuffed with incident and endeavour, and illuminated by a stunning goal from Tomoki Iwata, was settled in favour of the Premier League side by two goals from Joe Willock. Yet Birmingham will draw not merely a lot of pride from their performance but also encouragement that if they are promoted out of League One, they will be able to cope at the higher level.
Birmingham might also wonder whether Willock’s first goal crossed the line. “It’s a 50-50 chance the decision goes in your favour and it didn’t,” said the Birmingham manager, Chris Davies. Although Bailey Peacock-Farrell’s feet were well behind the line when he reacted sharply to punch away Willock’s close-range shot, whether the whole of the ball had crossed the whole of the line was an extremely close-run thing. With no goalline technology, the decision fell to the linesman Nigel Lugg, a former warehouse operations manager from Croydon, and he judged it had.
