Morning:
8°c
The series of outlandish events that have made this season's FA Cup unlike any other in memory can be understood in two ways.
The gloomier construction is that the Big Four have become so bored of quadropolising what has become a consolation trophy for them that they've temporarily mislaid the will to win it.
The more bullish reading is that the competition has finally woken from the coma in which it had lain for so long.
Whichever reading is more accurate, Saturday may have been the most remarkable day in the Cup's history. To lose one of the two surviving giants to a rank underdog may be counted as good fortune. To lose both within a few hours seemed a genuine miracle.
Manchester United's home defeat to Portsmouth can be dismissed as one of those freak results that occasionally befall a dominant team which squanders countless chances before walking on to the one and only sucker punch thrown by the opposition.
If United were plain unlucky, Chelsea were out-thought, outfought and largely outplayed at Barnsley in a match that acted like the Tardis on the sensibilities, returning them to Cup's most glorious and upset-packed era of the 1970s.
The pitch was properly muddy, the crowd excitement bespoke of not a single prawn sandwich, the goalmouth scrambles were Byzantine, the excitement never dimmed and John Motson's commentary hinted at his adequacy of yore..
So powerful was the nostalgic aura that when a camera picked out local boy Dickie Bird in the stand, I was convinced he was preparing to look up at the sky (the bane of the seventies for Test cricket fans) and take the players off for bad light.
To the lasting regret of Avram Grant, whose tenure as Chelsea manager now hangs by a frayed shoelace, Bird did no such thing. Even a premature crowd invasion couldn't save Chelsea, who huffed and puffed after Carlo Cudicini had gifted Barnsley the lead, but without looking likely to equalise.
For anyone unconvinced how dramatically against type the 2008 FA Cup has been cast, a few anoracky statistics will suffice.
Everyone knows that 1995 was the last year in which one of Liverpool, Chelsea, United or Arsenal failed to win the trophy.
More obscure is the fact that today sees the first semifinal draw since 1987 without any Big Four representation.
Inflate that quartet into a Biggish Six by including the two next most successful Cup sides of the modern era, Spurs and Everton, and you have to go back to 1975 to find none of the halfdozen in the semis.
Although you'd love to see Barnsley rewarded for taking out Liverpool and Chelsea in successive rounds, who will win the trophy seems a less significant question than who will not.
For the absence of the usual suspects guarantees a final laden with tension, passion and romance and no doubt two strong candidates for the next Worst Singles of All Time compilation.
Whether this is a genuine resurrection for the Cup, I rather doubt. More likely the Big Four will re-exert their stranglehold next season, and this year will prove an astounding but short-lived revival of the kind experienced by Oliver Sachs's catatonics, after being injected with the drug L-Dopa, in the movie Awakenings.
Very soon they all slipped back into a coma, but by God they relished every second of consciousness for the sadly brief time it endured.
So should the FA Cup..
To lose one of the two surviving giants to a rank underdog may be counted as good fortune. To lose both is a miracle.
