Express & Star

Blog; West Brom's FA Cup exit was just torturous

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This was an absolutely dreadful cup tie that did nothing at all to revive or restore any of that old magic that we used to associate with the FA Cup, writes Albion blogger Neil Whitehouse.

For some reason or another, since we returned to the Premier League, we seem to serve up some of our worst performances in this competition and this one was no different to ensure that this year's road to Wembley quickly turned out to be another miserable cul-de-sac.

I really wish I could end my affection for the cup because it would prevent me from getting disappointed when we bow out in such a lacklustre fashion. The draw had been relatively kind to us and I thought that the win over Newcastle might have given us some momentum to take on a Palace team that has not travelled well this season.

But right from the outset, there was never any suggestion that we were in for an entertaining afternoon with us lacking any cohesion or recognisable style of play. The worst thing you can do against a well-drilled Tony Pulis team is give them an early lead but thanks to some sloppy play from Goran Popov, that's exactly what we managed to do and this latest error has probably signalled the end of his Albion career. Palace were then more than content to protect their advantage by staying compact and displaying their newly-found defensive resolve to restrict us to long range efforts. When we did get shots on target, Julian Speroni was up to the task of keeping us at bay although most of his saves were fairly routine in nature. Unfortunately, Shane Long had an afternoon he would want to forget and Zoltan Gera was a long way from what we know he can produce to leave us short of inventiveness. The substitutions just seemed to make the situation worse and disrupted what little pattern of play there was. Our passing in and around their penalty area was never good enough to really open them up and the feeling that we weren't going to equalise set in midway through the second half to leave a subdued home crowd thoroughly frustrated and contemplating a tame and insipid cup exit.