Due to a lack of TV coverage (not even the hooky foreign channels fancied a piece of this) it is difficult for me to judge the performance. I can merely base this on radio and Twitter commentary. It did seem that we were largely very poor over the 90 minutes. I don't think we really threatened the goal in normal time, save for a point blank header that Ben Arfa somehow managed to put over the bar. Blackburn weren't much better by the sounds of it, but they managed to get the rub of the green with their penalty. Again, I am basing this on the radio commentary so it's not really a watertight argument, but we had a stonewall penalty turned down which led to a Blackburn counter attack which resulted in a penalty for them. The enormous Yakubu buried it and made it 2-0. Game over, or so we thought. On 92 minutes we finally decided to have a shot on goal, well done Danny Guthrie. Surely it was just a consolation goal. The Dreamboat had other ideas though as he smashed in a 25 yard free kick to send the Darwin End into raptures. Extra time. Blackburn again took the lead when Pederson scored a free kick which took a fairly hefty deflection leaving us to chase the game again, which we did with a penalty of our own from Mr. Loverman (shabba). We shot ourselves in the foot for a fourth time as the utterly dreadful Gael Givet scored in the last minute of extra time - suspiciously offside according to some?

I'm exhausted just typing that out. I believe this is what they call in the trade, a "proper cup tie". It had a bit of everything; goals, contentious decisions and full-blooded tackles. All that it was really lacking was a crowd. We took a superb following down to Ewood Park, with some reports claiming we outnumbered the home fans. An amazing effort from our lot, they are the credit to the club. Granted, Blackburn are in "crisis" at the moment - but to have four or five thousand home fans turning up to an all Premiership tie is pretty shoddy.

The overall performances in the Wigan and Blackburn game need to be looked at in the coming days I feel, as we make the trip to the Anti-Football Establishment of England on Monday. We need to be airtight at the back and try to control the midfield. We need to see more from Ben Arfa, it is his time to shine. He needs to try and play as part of a team instead of trying to take on every member of the opposition. I think we have put a lot of expectation on his shoulders in his defence, but we know he has the talent so he needs to start delivering.

Fingers crossed this result doesn't result in a collapse results wise! Onwards and upwards...