07-01-2021, 14:45
![[Image: 30287.jpg]](https://i.ibb.co/DGHw9rJ/30287.jpg)
With our league form increasingly suggesting that the next away trip will probably be to Dignitas, it's a welcome relief to put the Prem table away for a couple of days and embrace what tends to be my favourite weekend of the football calendar. Yes, it's the third round of the FA Cup: that exhilarating fairytale of frosty, windswept grounds and floodlit miracles, in which Albion have never ever come a cropper. Well, not with Sam Allardyce sitting in the dugout, anyway.
Ah, hang on.
Yes, Tuesday of this week was the thirtieth anniversary of Tim Buzaglo Day, which sent Big Sam and Brian Talbot packing the first time round. No Woking to set up a date with destiny this time round, though not for lack of effort on their part; they were edged out by Gillingham in the first round. Instead, the draw has set up our first senior fixture against Blackpool since the dramatic 3-2 victory at the Hawthorns - our last under Roberto Di Matteo - exactly ten years ago; the first cup tie versus the Seasiders since our heroic-yet-doomed 1978 run to a Highbury semi-final, and the first to send us to Bloomfield Road since a third-round replay on the 8th of January 1964. Even the most cursory glance at history suggests that this match-up produces goals galore: the last 0-0 between the sides was in 1976, and since then we've had ten consecutive games in which both teams scored, with the average being bang on four goals shared each time. And if it helps to settle the nerves at all, Albion have generally had the better of these encounters, though as our last stroll along the prom-prom-prom resulted in Michael Oliver kindly reducing us to nine men in the first half, that 2010 visit ended in a narrow, frankly unlucky defeat.
Still... as banana skins (or tangerine skins) go, it's big enough to cause some alarm, and slippery enough to be an embarrassment if things do go wrong. Having dropped down to the basement of the Football League in the long aftermath of their Premier League adventure, Blackpool have clawed their way back up to League One and finally escaped the shadow of the hated Oystons. They're not prolific scorers, but around the Albion defence at the minute, you don't really have to be; the threat comes from Gary Madine and Jerry Yates up front, with Chris Hamilton also regularly finding the net from the wing. On paper, Albion easily have the strength and firepower to top whatever Blackpool offer, but strength and firepower don't always translate into confidence in front of goal during a miserable season.
With major league matches ahead, the temptation of modern football is to regard this competition as a sideshow, but clearing the hurdles ahead is going to be infinitely harder if we clatter headlong into this first and lowest one. Whatever else may come, a win on Saturday is a must.
"I would rather spend a holiday in Tuscany than in the Black Country, but if I were compelled to choose between living in West Bromwich or Florence, I should make straight for West Bromwich." - J.B. Priestley
