I think the tie of the weekend is the live Setanta game between Everton and Aston Villa on Sunday. They produced perhaps the most exciting Premier League game of the season so far with the 3-2 Villa win in December at Goodison.
Everton equalised in the 93rd minute and Villa went up the other end and won it in the 94th through Ashley Young. I think both sides see that as a pivotal game in their seasons, Everton because David Moyes feels his players have responded wonderfully well to that and Martin O’Neill because his players gained belief from securing a win in seemingly impossible circumstances.
So it is fascinating that they have been thrown together in the FA Cup so soon afterwards. I also don’t discount Cardiff’s chances against Arsenal on Monday night in the fourth round replay so that will be a good game.
It will be interesting to see what Guus Hiddink makes of Chelsea in the homely surroundings of Vicarage Road and Derby v Manchester United? I can’t see lightning striking twice.
Regarding England’s defeat in Spain, I just thought it was a bit of a reality check after all of the expectation surrounding England under Capello, and much of it justified, I just thought that while England have come a long way, there is still a long way to go on that journey and that if you take Spain as the benchmark we are clearly still a bit of a way short of that.
I hope it wasn’t so much of a humbling experience as a learning experience, I think if you are going to be the best then you have got to learn to play against the best and the next step is to beat the best. It was a step in that direction. I was interested that Capello feels confident to say, if all the players are available to him, that the next time England play Spain they will win, he is not a man who is prone to bouts of self-doubt and I think his judgement is usually sound.
He thinks the potential is there in the England squad to get to that level, but he would want a full squad available to him to do that because obviously Gerrard and Rooney were key absentees the other night.
I suspect that Capello knew this would be the likely outcome when he pushed for this game because don’t forget it was Capello who asked to play against the very best and specifically asked for Spain. So he won’t have been surprised by anything that he has seen.
We talk about his level-headedness. He was very level-headed after that terrible performance in a friendly against Czech Republic when people were crying for blood and he was just as level-headed when people were eulogising about that win in Croatia so it is par for the course.