Brighton drawn away at Sheffield United in FA Cup fourth round
Good news if you are an Albion fan who like snooker, Sean Bean or The Full Monty. Brighton will face two trips to the Steel City in the space of a month after being drawn against Sheffield United in the fourth round of the FA Cup.
It represents a decent draw for the Albion. The Blades have much bigger fish to fry in terms of trying to avoid relegation from the Premier League, which may lead Chris Wilder to name a weakened team.
Roberto De Zerbi in contrast has left nobody under any illusions over what Brighton want from the FA Cup this season. The Albion are taking the competition deadly serious as they look to go better than last year’s semi final defeat on penalties to Manchester United at Wembley.
De Zerbi named a full strength side for the trip to Stoke City in the third round. Conceding an own goal and giving away a penalty ensured Brighton made harder work of seeing off the Championship strugglers than was necessary, eventually running out 4-2 winners.
Sheffield United meanwhile secured their place in the fourth round by winning 4-0 at League Two Gillingham thanks to two goals apiece from William Osula and James McAtee.
Had the Blades suffered a shock defeat and the draw remained the same, the Albion would have been heading back to the Priestfield Stadium to face their former landlords.
Brighton and Sheffield United have met on three previous occasion in the FA Cup. Barry Lloyd took charge of the Albion for the first time in a 0-0 third round draw at Bramall Lane in January 1987. The Blades ran out 2-1 winners in the replay 11 days later, Dale Jasper scoring the Brighton consolation.
The other clash from the 1921-22 season remains one of the biggest FA Cup upsets the Albion have ever pulled off. Facing top flight United in the first round of the competition looked a tough enough challenge on its own.
But Brighton’s task was made even harder as a flu epidemic swept through the squad in the lead up to the game at the Goldstone, leaving Charlie Webb’s side to have a very strange look about it.
In a set of selection decisions that Mark McGhee would have been proud of, Webb had all kinds of players playing in all kinds of weird and wonderful positions. Most notably, he named regular full back Jack Thompson as a centre forward.
These bizarre selection policies ended up working. Wally Little opened the scoring so early that many of the crowd missed the goal.
It proved to be the only one of the game, sending United out of the competition and giving the Albion a plum tie with Huddersfield Town in round two, who were just about to start their domination of the decade under the management of Herbert Chapman.
Brighton will travel to Bramall Lane on the weekend of Saturday 27 January. We would normally be pretty confident that television would not be interested in moving the date for such a dull tie.
But seeing as ITV were a total disgrace with their third round picks and opted for Crystal Palace v Everton based over Maidstone United v Stevenage based on nothing more than it being two Premier League teams, who know what will happen.
