Musings on Tuesday's Events

Five days on from Tuesday night and it still doesn't seem real. Even after having booked a flight to the Final on Thursday night, and having spent the last couple of days finding and booking a hotel, it still seems odd. Watching the highlights over and over again just reinforces how bizarre it all is.

A few things to reflect on, in no particular order:

• We have now played 420 minutes of football against Premier League opposition, and conceded just four goals with a back four that was nowhere near first choice at the start of the year.
• Given the easy chances missed/kicked off the line/hit the woodwork, we could have had way more than four goals across the two ties, almost as remarkable.
• Blair Turgott learnt an object lesson in taking the ball to the corner and keeping it there the next time, lest the ball end up in your own net ten seconds later.
• How can a top flight side concede a goal from a corner, eight games in a row?
• Throwing on forwards at the expense of midfielders is something that a pub team manager might consider tactically unsound. Yes, now you've five strikers strung across the penalty area, but nobody to pass to them.
• Confidence in football is an amazing thing. In one half, tails up, playing like you're a side three divisions higher. In the other, having given up yet another unopposed free header that ended up in your net, playing with complete terror and panic.
• Shay Given must be chained to the goalline.
• How noisy were the fans when we scored the goal in the second leg.
• Fifteen years of absolutely chronic Cup draws finally gave way to something more entertaining.
• I hope that the commemorative strip idea that was so roundly panned (and rightly so) on twitter and facebook yesterday was the idea of the kit manufacturer and not the club. Not days after being feted in the media as an antidote to the ills of the modern game, to then be seen to be cashing in is absolutely chronic PR if it's the club's doing.
• The club made the Wall Street Journal today, the New York Times on Wednesday. Appearances on Canadian TV? Nil.