Sheffield Wednesday 0: Manchester City 1 (FA Cup 5th Round 2020)

I'm pretty old. I remember some real glory days and wonderful Wednesday teams. And if we were still the force we once were in English football we would, of course, have played a completely different game to the one we played last night.

But at the end of this game, I felt proud of being a Sheffield Wednesday supporter again. Here’s our team on a desperate run of form, shipping goals against weak opponents as though defence had gone out of fashion. And along comes one of the world’s best teams, turning out pretty much a full strength side that has, this season, put 8 past Watford, 6 past Villa and 5 past West Ham. Plus they’ve done the double over Sheffield United this season. Plus they’d scored 4 in each of the previous Cup rounds. On Owlstalk, a supporters' forum, I’m reading predictions of double figure disasters.

And we witness a team performance in which absolutely every one of our players ran his guts out and gave it his best shot.

Look, no-one can do better than their best, whatever level that happens to be. If we had a world-beating team today we wouldn’t be half-way down the Championship. But on occasions a whole team can lift each other to something way beyond what we thought was possible.

Was it perfect? Of course not. Did everyone play like Messi? Of course not. But was there anyone out there not playing as hard as he was able for the honour of Sheffield Wednesday? Absolutely not.

It makes me sad today that such negative suggestions are even being made, let alone insisted upon.

There are many, many criticisms that can be made these days about Wednesday. I respectfully suggest that last night’s efforts did not deserve to be included among them.