My colleague Josep Packsten asked me to fill in for him on today’s FA Cup rewind. Happy to oblige, sir!

Blackburn Rovers 0 – 2 Wolverhampton Wanderers

Prediction: Blackburn Rovers ? – ? Wolverhampton Wanderers.
No disrespect to my colleague Josep, but this was a chicken sh•t call. Have the cojones to pick a team, man! He was right in that Blackburn played like crap, but really it was all over in an eye-blink. That two-minute stretch when Gomes and Cunha scored 60 seconds apart didn’t even give the at-home viewer time for a bio-break. 

Plymouth Argyle 1 – 0 Liverpool

Prediction: Plymouth Argyle 0 – 3 Liverpool
This IS the FA Cup magic. Right here. There hasn’t been as big a giant-killing since… well, a long time in my book. There’s an entire novella to unpack from this 90 minutes, but here’s an attempt to make sense of it.

1. Arne Slot is human after all. This was the first major stumble in his tenure. Granted, with the Merseyside derby coming up midweek it’s clear he has prioritized that fixture over this one. And if Liverpool win the league, nobody will remember this blip.
2. Plymouth weren’t all that good, they were just less bad than Liverpool. Fair play to the Pilgrims, who sit dead last in the Championship and have only won four games the entire season. You did just enough.
3. WTF was Harvey Elliot doing jumping with his hands up like that in the box? He looked like a U10 AYSO kid in his first soccer game.
4. Ryan Hardie, who converted the PK, could walk through Plymouth naked and covered in £50 notes and still not pay for a pint or meal. For a week.
5. Just how useless was Federico Chiesa? This is an established international player, and he impressed with his sheer awfulness.
6. Pilgrim Pete, Plymouth’s cartoonish mascot, had more energy and verve than the entire Liverpool team.

And Josep, to answer your question about which young academy prospect will impress? None. None of them.

Aston Villa 2 – 1 Tottenham Hotspur

Prediction: Aston Villa 2 – 0 Tottenham Hotspur
I grudgingly concede that Packsten might have been correct giving the edge to Villa. They were the better team, but so many questions were answered (about Spurs) today.

• Do Tottenham suck that much?
  • Yes.
• Is Kinsky a first-team keeper?
  • Uh, no. Despite some good saves he should have done better against Jacob Ramsey’s shot.
• Will Rashford make an impression?
  • If scowling on the bench in a puffy coat counts, then yes. But on the pitch? Not yet.
• Was Mathys Tel worth all that cash?
  • His stoppage time goal, while useless towards the final outcome, was a lone bright spot in an otherwise gloomy outing.

Spurs will go yet another season bereft of any silverware, or even the whiff of silverware. The only smell surrounding them now is desperation, resignation and poop. And that sound you hear? That’s the door slamming on Ange Postecoglu’s a$$.