Cup draw looms, another run please?

By: Dan Clough | December 1st, 2007

As the FA Cup draw beckons (3:15pm on BBC1 to be exact) it’s time to start praying for some silverware.

We have two chances, the Beer Cup and the FA Cup.

In order to win trophies, you have to beat the best, so for us to beat Arsenal and progress in the Carling Cup is entirely possible. Look back to when we won it in 2002, a 4-0 victory at home to Arsenal saw us through to the semi finals!

With any luck The Gooners will rest a few and be concentrating on their more than impressive league form and slip up, it is possible, especially at Ewood.

However, the big one of course is the FA Cup! Semi finals last year and we were very unlucky not to go through to the final after a superb performance against Chelsea at Old Trafford which saw us eventually go out in extra time after MGP missed a sitter in the dying moments of normal time.

The FA Cup is a trophy Rovers have not won since 1928, but in the early years of professional football when the cup was more important to clubs than the league, we were hugely succesful. Indeed we won it three times in a row (still a record) from 1884 to 1886, then twice again in 1890 and 1891 before that most recent 1928 victory. A defeat in 1960 against Wolves is our last appearance in the final.

With Rovers looking as good this season as they have for many a year, I do believe that this is the year for Mark Hughes to grab some silverware!

Of course, it’s way too early to be making such daft predictions, but that is the magic of the cup!

Tomorrow’s draw will hopefully pitch us against a lower league opposition who, barring a huge lack of discipline, should be easily brushed aside. One side who will be praying for a big club is Havant and Waterlooville who, amazingly, knocked out Notts County! A team like this would be ideal for us.

I’m not worried about the possibility of an upset, I think under Hughes we have a manager who will instill into the players a degree of respect for the opposition, making sure they are aware that they still have to go out and beat the team, not just assume we will do (I make particular reference to the cup exit against Bournemouth in the Souness era)!

For me, I’d like us to draw Cambridge United. I have a friend who supports the U’s and it would be great to see us draw them. Failing that I have another friend who’s a Notts Forest fan (actually writes the Forest Offside) or of course it would be nice to play Burnley.

Either way, it would be a disaster for us to draw Manchester United. We’ll leave that one for Peterborough so the Fergie boys can do battle!