We’re through at least – but for a while there was a major scare as Bolton progressed to the fourth round of the FA Cup with a 5-2 home win over Walsall.
Andy Cook – who Vital Walsall identified as a man that could hurt us – certainly did when he gave us a lead and another bad week on and off the pitch for Wanderers was going to get a whole lot worse.
But after the break, and a couple of substitutions, Wanderers managed to click, with Clayton Donaldson coming on to score his first goal for the club, while Josh Magennis would also end his drought, bagging a hat-trick in what were his first goals since September. There would still be some frustration for us in between that, conceding an own goal which took a double deflection, eventually going in off Mark Beevers allowing Walsall to pull the score back to 3-2 for a while.
It may have only been Walsall, who let’s be honest are in the bottom half of League One, but at least we’ve seen some goals and a reminder of what it’s like to win by more than a single goal. It was a day we also got to see one of our youngsters get a run-out, with Luca Connell coming on very late. Some clown on Twitter asked what was the point of bringing him on as he’ll never be played regularly, but I’m not sure what Phil Parkinson can do to win on that front.
One unsurprising stat was the game was played in front of our lowest post-war FA Cup third round attendance. As much as it may be contributing factor, I don’t see it as entirely vote of no-confidence in the Andersons (although there shouldn’t be any confidence in them) – it wasn’t a massive draw of a tie and the gate wasn’t much smaller than last season’s Carabao Cup tie against Sheffield Wednesday.
Anyway, round four. Who would we want?