4th Round Proper – Stevenage FC V Everton FC

As you can see from the above map, the Giant Killing Adventure is travelling 133 miles back down south from Keepmoat Stadium in Doncaster to the Lamex Stadium in Stevenage. 

Now it is the 4th Round Proper of the FA Cup 2013/14 and we have picked up our first Premiership big boy – Everton FC as they tackle our winner of the previous two games, Stevenage.

32 teams will fight it out during this round.   

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Everton Football Club is based in Liverpool, Merseyside and they were formed in 1878.   They were originally StDomingos Methodist Church and they played their home games on Stanley Park.  One year later they started to recruit players from outside the Church parish and changed their name to Everton – in the 1901/02 season they finally settled for the team colours of Royal Blue.

In 1884 they moved to a field on Priory Road and shortly after moved again to a field off Anfield Round. It was here that they were founder members of the football league and had their first football league game against Accrington Stanley (Accrington Stanley, who are they?).  Everton moved across Stanley Park to Goodison in 1892. They also gained their most popular nickname ‘the toffees.’

In 1906 they won the FA Cup for the first time by beating Newcastle United in the final. They have won the FA Cup five times in total with victories in 1933, 1966, 1984 and 1995. Everton are a club with a long and successful History as they have won the top flight title 9 times and the European Cup Winners Cup once.  

The 1980s was their most successful period as they won the league twice, the FA Cup once and had their European Victory.    

Everton are having a very good 2013/14 campaign. Our blog on day one (13^th August 2013) mentioned that Roberto Martinez had moved to Everton after Wigan’s FA Cup victory over Manchester City in the summer of 2013.  Since Roberto’s arrival he has built upon the solid foundation laid down by David Moyes and Everton are currently flying in 5^th position in the Premiership with 41 Points from 21 games. They are only 1 point behind their great local rivals Liverpool (who play at Anfield across Stanley Park) and 7 points behind league leaders Arsenal. Martinez is the current manager to ‘hold’ the FA Cup and perhaps his recent success and experience in the competition can lead the toffees to another great FA Cup run.

However, Stevenage will not be pushovers on Saturday 25^th January. Stevenage play in the Sky Bet League One which is 2 leagues lower than Everton FC.  Stevenage FC are still bottom of the league with 22 points from 25 games and are having a bad season. But, the FA Cup is different to the league and anything can happen.  Stevenage have the advantage of playing at home and it was only 2010/11 that they reached the 5^th Round and 2009/10 that they beat Newcastle at home. 

I have just been interrupted ironically by an old friend Nick Blogg as he called to ask me about the weekend.  I’m trying to blog and I'm being interrupted by a blogg!  This leads to me onto the tickets for the game at Stevenage.  I have kept an eye on the ticket situation over the past week and they only went on sale to the general public at 10am yesterday. I was busy at that time and asked blog guest Tim Webster to order the tickets for me. He went on the Internet at 10am and it appeared that all tickets were sold on the Stevenage website and the Everton website would not let him buy tickets without having been to prerequisite games.  I panicked and thought that I’d have to blog about the game from in front of my TV.  However, I would like to thank Dave from Stevenage as I called the club at 11am and he was extremely helpful – tickets have been bought and the mini crisis is over... 1 week and 1 sleep to go...   

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