Full time: Newcastle 1 Birmingham 5

Glenn Roeder commented:

"It was a shocking night for us. Disastrous. I have to apologise to our fantastic fans who had to sit through that. Something that was not a performance. There was no hint that was coming. There are no excuses.

"It is unbelievable a team which can fight as hard as it did on Sunday, and at times also play very well and score three goals away from home at a place like Tottenham, can come out a few days later and not put on a performance.

"However, I will not let this one game detract from the fact I know the players who have been involved over the last few weeks and months have done incredibly well.

"I am not going to come out and make excuses for the performance.

I will apologise for the performance, that is the least I can do as the manager to our supporters.

"They will find it hard to accept, but believe me, no supporter is hurting as much as me.

"However, I am a big boy. I have to take that one on the chin. We have a game on Saturday at home to West Ham.

"It is quite simple - lie down on the floor in the ring and wait for the count of 10 or get up and come out fighting.

"Whatever I could or could not do as a player, the one thing I did do was fight and I know the players who played last night and who start on Saturday will come out fighting as well.

"It was a shocking night for us, but we need the men on Saturday, we need strong characters whatever age they are.

"We have to live with it, as uncomfortable as it is to. They will, make no mistake about that."

"Wednesday wasn't a game too far for the young players but it was a hell of a learning curve. But it doesn't change our transfer plans. To let one lack of a performance change what my plans are over the next two weeks would be stupid.

"What it does, it reinforces the importance of being able to fulfill what my plans are over the next two weeks and we have four or five senior players back over that period. By the time the window shuts I am expecting to have four or five available and that will make a big difference."

We'll start with a quote from our Reading match report back in early December:

"it's virtually guaranteed that the wheels are going to come off somewhere when we meet a decent side on a good day, when we're under strength and under the weather.

"It could come at Stamford Bridge, The Reebok or even at St.James' on New Years Day. One bad result though won't undo the good work of recent weeks and shouldn't provoke hand-wringing and soul-searching."

Needless to say a howking on home soil from a lower league side wasn't quite what we anticipated when those lines were penned - we're good, but we're not that good....

We really should know better by now though. In the barmy word of this Pandora's Box of a club, winning against all of the odds on the road is the ying to the yang of a debacle on Barrack Road following immediately in its wake. 

And when we do screw up, of course we never do things by halves - there were two tonight, both abject.

We thought we'd experienced the ultimate roller coaster ride earlier this season when a makeshift side went to Serie A pacesetters Palermo and won 1-0 - only to then crash at SJP to Sheffield United, who hadn't even scored an away goal at that point since returning to the Premiership. We were wrong - this was far worse...

Quite simply everything caught up with us tonight - as payback for all the opposition near-misses, last-ditch let-offs and assorted miracles from Seamus that kept us ploughing forward in recent months was exacted by Steve Bruce & Co.        

Nothing went right; every single Newcastle player had a stinker, regardless of age or experience. 

Of course, disappointment and the FA Cup have gone hand in hand where we are concerned ever since we stopped starring on newsreels.

From future managers Keegan or Gullit dumping us out (the latter for Chelsea on this ground 11 years to the day) to the present incumbent putting through his own net to end a four-game marathon series with lower league Watford, we've done it all.

Of course this particular FA Cup humiliation was lapped up by the BBC, who beamed this into the homes of 4.5million people - a larger audience for our version of reality TV than the inferior product on Channel 4 (big bother vs big brother - and hey, we had a racism controversy first....)

And while that Edgar Street footage gets replayed more than planes flying into tall buildings, let's not forget the Sportsnight film stock of the debacles at Wrexham and Exeter to name but two - the image of a prone Kenny Wharton lying injured and playing the whole of Devon onside remains vivid quarter of a century after, thanks to Harry Carpenter's mob....

To the game then, of which there is little to detain us.  

Straight away we appeared to be recycling our tactical notes from the first tie - the flaw in that being a failure to notice that Cameron Jerome was playing this time out.

As a result we made no provision for shadowing him and seemed ignorant of his presence -   no mean feat given that the Yorkshire-born striker stands over six foot in his bare feet. 

In a parallel of the first game, going behind quickly didn't jolt us into action and we should have gone 2-0 down well before this tie was seemingly put beyond us just before the interval. 

A brief flurry of activity after the restart saw Milner wedge one in at the Gallowgate End and fleetingly hopes were raised that we could turn this around. 

Almost before home throats were cleared of the first cheers of the evening though, we promptly went and imploded at the other end. If the Chelsea boss was watching then he wisely kept his thoughts about our young players to himself this time....

At 3-1 down and a player short the only thing that was going to save us was a Leazes End pitch invasion from raggy-haired louts wearing parkas, Oxford bags and three star jumpers. 

However, there was to be no repeat of the infamous 1974 Forest FA Cup tie encroachment. Instead we simply buckled in the final few minutes to concede two more and complete a miserable night. 

The contrast to the display of City in the first game when they went behind a man short isn't as great as it might seem on paper, as Bruce's mob were pretty rotten for most of the game down there.

Results don't lie though and they were still capable of getting bodies and the ball into our box in the latter stages of that first tie despite being man down. We couldn't manage it with a full complement from the outset - Butt aside - if we mixed it up, we'd make a cake. 

What also is beyond question is that shipping seven goals from close range to a lower league team tells its own story - news of an extended deal for Bramble wasn't quite the transfer window contract development that most envisaged.

The temptation is to lay into the team, but as we said in the aforementioned Reading waffle, this was almost inevitable at some point - the warning signs were there in abundance at St.Andrews and in the opening salvo at White Hart Lane.

Since then we'd been through the mixer at Spurs, bringing Ramage back in with the bare minimum of training - the lad perhaps paying the price tonight for his willingness to aid the cause. 

While we were knackered, City by contrast had ten full days to prepare for this one - their abortive attempt at replacing a midden of a pitch failing and the home game with Leeds being called off as a consequence. 

Quite simply the "burning passion" of our young conscripts that Freddy Shepherd had droned on about while sliding the cheque book back into his pocket isn't enough. 

Trying to out-Geordie Steve Bruce is one thing, presenting children and reserves on the verge of rejection as a glittering future starting now is quite another. 

Just who are these wonderful super players that we're waiting to sign - and if they're that good, then why the hell would they want to come to this madhouse?

The need for a credible defensive leader and organiser is pressing - what in effect we thought we'd bought in Boumsong. Carr and Babayaro's attitude is there for all to see, Moore is a footnote in history leaving us with Ramage, Bramble and Taylor as examples for the next generation - oh dear.

At the very time that we could do with someone to help Taylor develop, he's ended up as the role model to Hunty and Edgar. On a "don't do as I do" basis that might work but in real terms it isn't a goer.

With things going wrong, we looked to the substitutes and found - nothing. Less a bench - more a a creche. Surely if we were halfway serious about this competition then Parker and Emre would have been on there, if only for the possible extra time and penalties?

Speaking of absentees, Anglo-Spanish relations must be at their lowest ebb since the bloody Armada if Luque couldn't get in the side ahead of Pattison. 

His response to recent press quotes about getting his head up has presumably seen him lodge it firmly up his Iberian posterior. No matter how bad his attitude, surely he must have been more use to us than Pattison. 

We may be at risking of being labelled gingerist here, but poor Matty is simply out of his depth and certainly not punching above his weight. 

Admirable though his comeback from two career- threatening injuries is, any reservoirs of goodwill towards him are draining away as rapidly as his confidence. 

Fitness also seems to be an issue and his meandering in no-mans land between attack and defence was of no value to us whatsoever. As a winger he's a round peg in a square hole.

Some comments also flew around in the second half about why we operated with an orthodox left winger in the shape of O'Brien, yet failed to feed him the ball when he was in space. 

All we can say in response to that is that the same players on the park presumably see him in training and know exactly how frustrating and profligate he is.

We were so collectively woeful and inept tonight that almost any team could probably have beaten us. On that basis this result can be seen as something of a let-off, coming as it did in the early rounds of a cup competition against a lower league side that were a long way off being minnows.

It could have been much worse and it could have been in the Premiership - where a more ruthless outfit may have buried us by a far more worrying margin. 

The lack of a crowd did also add to the general air of unreality over the whole night - whether the players felt that is open to question. Whether they felt anything is actually open to question.

But while some may successfully deluded ourselves that the cup no longer matters and it's better to just lose like this rather than decamp en masse to be howked at Cardiff again, the last vestige of romance in our soul begs to differ.

We came close to winning the league a decade ago, but what seemed unlikely then is just out of the question now. On that basis, winning a cup competition is the only vaguely realistic hope we ever have of genuinely achieving anything.  

And even after the interminable disappointments of the cups (not just domestically - Lisbon was a pretty low point in our personal history) we still cling to that child-like optimism that just once we'll pull it off - even if we're past the stage of sticking tinfoil on cardboard cutouts of trophies.        

Every cup defeat therefore is a dagger through the heart of those hopes of ever watching an open top bus go past. Witness the ragging we gave Souness and his side when we lost at Wigan in the League Cup - a competition Arsenal now send a side composed of ball boys out in. It still matters to us. 

This defeat was no exception, made worse by our wretchedness - we certainly couldn't be accused of going down fighting. 

And if we're not careful, the eminently more winnable UEFA Cup will slip away from us in the coming weeks - it may be nil desperandum 'til Hampden, but a nagging feeling that qualifying for the bloody thing was the summit of our ambitions isn't being eradicated by any transfer activity.

If our players conform to footballing tradition, then they'll undoubtedly relish the chance to get this defeat of their systems by having another match come along quickly, a home game also ticking the box of being able to put it right in front of their own (fabulous) fans.    

Roeder reckoned that the Butt slap incident spurred us on to victory last weekend. This Saturday we'll see what reaction this kick in the nuts provokes. 

Defeat at the hands of a  West Ham side who have taken 2 points from a possible 33 on the road, scoring just twice in the process, is unthinkable  - but eminently possible for us. 

As Graeme Souness said, you're never more than two games away from a crisis here - regardless of what competition you're competing in.

Biffa

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