Liverpool move into the quarter finals of the FA Cup, beating Wolves.
We are now deep into the crucial stages of this year's FA Cup. The Non League brethren have made their traditional exit and the competition is heading towards the back straight before hitting the front. Mansfield Town, who have spent most of their history bobbing up and down in the game's lower division backwaters, were promptly given their marching orders by an Arsenal side who fervently believe that this season will be fourth time lucky and the Premier League winning trophy will be theirs to hold aloft at the Emirates Stadium.
There have been very few surprises and shocks in this season's FA Cup and all the contestants have boasted the most impeccable pedigree. The chances are that Wrexham will probably be feeling quite upbeat, positive and chipper since very few must have fancied their chances against a Chelsea side who have had more managers than hot dinners in recent times.
For a while there were one or too earth tremors at the Racecourse Ground yesterday but class is permanent and reality does have the final word. Chelsea eventually blew their victorious trumpets yesterday but not without a moment or two of Welsh defiance. Perhaps the stardust of Hollywood magic will be sprinkled all over the club. Ryan Reynolds seemed to think so and Wrexham are now poised for a quite remarkable achievement. Promotion to the Premier League may be fanciful thinking but who knows?
Meanwhile at the Molineux on Friday evening the locals will probably cry into their beer for quite a while. Wolves must have been feeling utterly overwhelmed and not just because they were beaten by Liverpool in the FA Cup fifth round. For most of the season they have been spinning into a disastrous downward spiral where relegation from the Premier League now seems only a matter of time. Wolves have been awful, shapeless, desperately poor, completely lacking in any kind of identity and tumbling headlong into a humiliating no man's land, the darkest of holes.
But just for a while against Liverpool, Wolves felt just a little better about their dire predicament. Things can hardly get any worse so it may be as well to just accept their fate, resigned to an existence where only pride is the predominant emotion and who cares about the immediate future? So Wolves rolled up their sleeves and just got on with it, rather like one of those executioners during the French revolution. Poor old Wolves have been here before on innumerable occasions and it doesn't improve with age.
Still, at least Wolves can relax in the knowledge that the damage has already been done and, besides, the FA Cup was always likely to be a frivolous distraction. You remembered the Wolves of old, the Wolves of Derek Dougan, Kenny Hibbitt, John Richards, Mike Bailey, the Wolves of Steve Daley, and much further back, the inimitable Billy Wright who was married to one of the Beverley Sisters, a morally upright defender of towering authority and majesty. There was the Wolves of Bill Slater, Jimmy Mullen and Johnny Hancocks, attackers of pace, power and proper, cutting penetration, incisive and decisive.
And then there was the Wolves that claimed the old First Division championship, the Wolves who were feared and revered throughout Europe. The last time Wolves won the FA Cup was now 66 years ago when they beat Blackburn Rovers at the old Wembley Stadium and there's been nothing since. They have gazed mournfully into the abyss, only briefly threatening to do the same all over again but finding that somebody had locked up the shop and never opened up again since.
Certainly on Friday there were no reminders of those unforgettable nights at Moulineux when the Russians of Dynamo Moscow came armed with flowers and the floodlights gleamed radiantly. But Wolves have never really been the same since the departure of the stern, ruthless disciplinarian who was Bill McGarry. Mcgarry never beat about the bush or minced his words because football was the most important livelihood and results took precedence to entertainment.
True, Wolves did win the League Cup on a number of occasions but the FA Cup does have an overarching superiority about it that the now Carabao Cup perhaps lacks. The FA Cup has an animal magnetism about it, a sense of the mythical fairy tale that none of us can quite explain. Wolves were privately fantasising about a visit to Wembley in the FA Cup Final but priorities lay quite obviously elsewhere. But not this season because relegation seems to be Wolves only destination.
And then there were the demoralising and devastating years when Wolves must have felt like a hot air balloon plummeting to the ground in the most dramatic slump. Wolves dropped through the divisions to their lowest point in the old Fourth Divsion only to make the most stirring of recoveries towards higher altitudes in the Premier League. Now though, Wolves have lost the plot again.
For a while the likes of Yerson Mouseka, Santiago Bueno, the lively and mercurial Toti Gomes, Jean Richner Bellegrade, Jao Gomes and Jackson Tchatchoua and Mane wove pretty triangles of passes before surging forward athletically with finesse and flair in equal measure. But this was the look of a doomed team, spirited and gallant in defeat but no more than admiring onlookers at Liverpool's artwork.
Rob Edwards sprinted ecstatically the length of his managerial dug out when Wolves beat Liverpool in the Premier League fixture last week but now there was a grim and sullen stare into the middle distance. Edwards will of course provide his Wolves with a morale boosting spoon of medicine as they launch their promotion bid back to the Premier League. But Friday night in the Midlands simply felt like a temporary redemption. Wolves have nothing to play for and almost felt as if a weight had been taken off our shoulders, a sigh of palpable relief in their every pass, tackle and shot.
Liverpool, for their part, will now look back on one of the most underwhelming Premier League seasons for a while After winning the Premier League last season, Liverpool have looked pale, troubled, careworn, lacklustre, their performances now a sad parody of last year. Mo Salah, who almost resembled Kevin Keegan and John Toshack on his own with goals of sensational brilliance, has barely registered up front and the lorryload of goals seemed to dry up. But the plaudits of praise from the devoted Kop at Anfield could be heard clearly at the other end of Stanley Park on Friday night.
But in this fifth round FA Cup tie against Wolves, Liverpool were sleek, streamlined, gorgeously artistic on and off the ball, a harmonious unit, full of wit, touch and vision, a team with a compatibility about them that knew exactly what they were supposed to be doing. The red shirts had an instinctive awareness of each other, passing of the most symmetrical kind and the type of finishing that eventually left Wolves desperate and forlorn in the second half.
Once again Dominic Szoboslai delivered the tastiest helping of Hungarian goulash with a typically consistent and hugely impressive display. Ryan Gravenberch, gave us a passing impersonation of Ian Callaghan or Brian Hall but you could never compare the two. Gravenberch was central to everything created and fashioned, darting in and out of spiders webs of passes between his colleagues. Alex McCallister, an Argentine diamond, oozed invention, forward thinking innovation and seemed to have an accurate compass in his feet.
And so to the goals themselves for Liverpool. Andrew Robertson, surely one of the finest full backs in the country, was both the sculptor and goal scoring hero. The ball was moved beautifully and precisely across the pitch from Gomes and then Salah. A carefully controlled movement at speed led to Roberston driving the ball into the Wolves net convincingly, unhesitatingly and handsomely.
A minute later and Wolves had gone completely, flattened like a heavyweight boxer who simply topples helplessly over the ropes when the punishment becomes too much. Another roulette wheel of passing from Liverpool's most expansive back catalogue, bore fruit. Robertson burst forward powerfully down the line before laying a peach of a low cut back cross to Salah. Salah came charging in from nowhere and simply passed the ball into the net. There was a sudden delay in the award of the goal because VAR, now reinstated into the FA Cup, had seen a toe that had strayed offside. But the goal was given and Liverpool made this tie look plain sailing.
When Curtis Jones, one of Liverpool's own and now a polished academy product, cut back onto his favourite foot after yet more dazzling pearls of passing, you knew a goal would always materialise. And so Liverpool's third had put this FA Cup game to bed and the formalities were out of the way. Liverpool now give the impression of metal detectors searching for a valuable Roman coin. Surely the FA Cup may be their sweetest consolation prize.
They are now in the last eight of the FA Cup and Wolves were left to commiserate with each other. For now Wolves are a team in turmoil and without a sympathetic voice from their most hardened critics. One day though, it'll all come up with roses again and of course they'll smell the coffee again. But the FA Cup will completely forget about Wolves. You feel sure that their day will come and the status quo will be restored. Their place in the limelight will be theirs for the taking sooner rather than later.
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