Carling Cup Considerations – Giant Killers take honours
Last updated : 22 September 2005 By Tony Scholes
 | Jan Budtz - shoot out hero for Doncaster |
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There’s been controversy, particularly at Doncaster, and unknowns have become stars of the week as their teams have come through to win places in the next round.
The final hero for Doncaster, in their penalty shoot out win over Manchester City, was Danish goalkeeper Jan Budz. He’d only come on in extra time after Andy Warrington was stretchered off with a suspected fracture, an incident that saw City’s Nedum Onuoha ridiculously sent off, and saved two of City’s three penalties in the shoot out, the other hitting the bar, as the Premiership club failed to score.
Tuesday saw Grimsby beat Spurs with a last minute goal at Blundell Park and I’m sure the name of the goalscorer is on everyone’s lips now – it was Jean-Paul Kamudimba Kalala. The Congo international defender has scored a couple of goals already but none quite so important as this one.
Gillingham’s 3-2 win over Portsmouth owes something to the poor goalkeeping of Jamie Ashdown who was directly responsible for two of the goals, one of them an own goal. It was a night when the Portsmouth fans turned on manager Alain Perrin. It is unlikely to have any effect, Milan Mandaric makes all the decisions and doesn’t care what others think.
The only other clubs to beat someone from a higher division were Barnet and Mansfield. Harry Redknapp made a host of changes to his Southampton side at Mansfield but they came a cropper as the home side celebrated the departure of Carlton Palmer with a 1-0 win, the goal coming from Giles Coke, and Barnet did what we couldn’t do and beat Plymouth.
That group could so easily have been joined by Wycombe who looked set for an upset at half time when they led Aston Villa 3-1. It wasn’t a good night for Gary Cahill, making his debut, he looked at fault with a couple of the goals, but Villa came storming back to incredibly win it 8-3.
The results were:
Barnet 2 Plymouth 1
Blackburn 3 Huddersfield 1
Burnley 3 Barnsley 0
Crystal Palace 1 Coventry 0
Cardiff 2 Macclesfield 1
Charlton 3 Hartlepool 1
Doncaster 1 Manchester City 1 (aet Doncaster won 3-0 on penalties)
Fulham 5 Lincoln 4 (aet)
Gillingham 3 Portsmouth 2 (aet)
Grimsby 1 Tottenham 0
Leicester 2 Blackpool 1
Mansfield 1 Southampton 0
Norwich 2 Northampton 0
Reading 1 Luton 0
Rotherham 0 Leeds 2
Scunthorpe 0 Birmingham 2
Sheffield Wed 2 West Ham 4
Shrewsbury 0 Sheffield Utd 0 (aet Sheffield Utd won 4-3 on penalties)
Sunderland 1 Cheltenham 0
Watford 2 Wolves 1
West Brom 4 Bradford 1
Wigan 1 Bournemouth 0
Wycombe 3 Aston Villa 8
Yeovil 1 Millwall 2
With the clubs competing in Europe coming in for the next round it means Saturday lunchtime’s draw will include 17 Premiership clubs, 10 from the Championship, 2 from League One and three from League Two as follows:
Premiership: Arsenal, Aston Villa, Birmingham, Blackburn, Bolton, Charlton, Chelsea, Everton, Fulham, Liverpool, Manchester Utd, Middlesbrough, Newcastle, Sunderland, West Brom, West Ham, Wigan.
Championship: Burnley, Cardiff, Crystal Palace, Leeds, Leicester, Millwall, Norwich, Reading, Sheffield Utd. Watford.
League One: Doncaster, Gillingham.
League Two: Barnet, Grimsby, Mansfield.