A warm up/dress rehearsal for the FA Cup quarter final this match was dubbed by some. Smertin leaving on Friday could have affected the players and it possibly did in the first half with the midfield lacking a bit of ummph that the Russian brought to the team. But despite that this fairly boring match turned out to be a classic. At half time with the scores 0-0 I did think to myself that it may be our 4th 0-0 in a row. I would have been gutted with that. Getting on in the second half with the drummer and J block massive still singing, Chris Powell hit a fairly low cross into the box, mistaking the Boro defence and reaching the head of Darren Bent who could do nothing but hit the ball into the net. 1-0. Crowd goes massive, all we have to do is hold this for 15+ minutes and the 3 points are ours. Unfortunately, Mark Viduka found a gap in our defence and let leash an unstoppable chip above Thomas Myhre into the back of the net, I wasn't sure it was in until he went to grab the ball out of the goal. Damnit. A win looked like it was thrown away.

Lucky for us we wern't finished there! A great piece of play meant Luke Young was gifted with the ball just inside the area, I thought he might create another Liverpool moment, which I think he wanted as I'm sure he took a shot, which went past the far post for Darren Bent to score his second and surely the winner. Again cue mental crowd celebrations and a great win wrapped up with Chrissy's tunnel celebrations :D Oh yeah and money for me for my bets :D