Cardiff v Reading FA Cup 4th Round Media Wrap

Who said the magic of the cup was dead? Full strength teams, Premier League sides getting knocked out by lower league sides and some cracking goals. And most importantly over in South Wales, Reading continued their FA Cup run with a good win against Cardiff, who grabbed a 2-1 win earlier in the season thanks to Alex Pearce's unfortunate defensive hat-trick.

The BBC, to their credit, gave us their customary half page write up, but we will forgive them given the rest of the results this round - they also include the video highlights of the game. With a headline of HRK striking a late winner and the Clarke making an "inspired" subsitution, it makes it all sound a little easy.

Wales Online give a scathing if brief report on the game, which is the shortest I have seen from a "home" report in a long time, however they do follow this up with a What we learned column (including the failure of Adam Le Fondre, who joined Bolton Wanderers on loan yesterday) and a debrief on the game which is highly critical of manager Russell Slade and the club as a whole.

As it's the FA Cup we do actually get a mention (well, just) on ITV, and a good pic of HRK with a 6 line entry is just about worth the click.

Looking at both Cardiff's and Reading's match reports on the club websites, it's easy to see which is the happier club. The Cardiff one being a dour read, with factual information probably in the favour of the home side, whereas the Reading one is positively bouncing with energy and happiness, oh what difference a win makes!

And what's this! We actually make the FA Website as well, with the headline "Reading leave it late to send Cardiff crashing from the FA Cup", and to make it even more interesting, they go on to mention how we dominated the game and also have a good lengthy interview with Steve Clarke.

We also get a mention in the Express, with Clarke quoted as saying that we are keeping level headed and focused; also they describe Cardiff's display as "abject" which probably isn't far from the truth!

The Guardian is back on form this week after ignoring us last time out, again with a good interview with Clarke, and he makes fun of the last time he was at Cardiff (managing West Brom) when he got sacked the day after! All in all, a nice report with some good stats, and also Slade gets part of the interview calling his side's performance "dire".

Sportsmole gets in on the act also, saying that we were the better side, a theme that is carried by a number of other of the online sites with Vital Football and Football 365 both echoing this report.

Finally Sky Sports, who again say that we were in the ascendancy, and also remember that it was on this ground that Hal last scored a goal in Wales for the international team!

All in all some good column inches this week, which I was surprised about given some of the results over the weekend, and what's our reward for two away wins at Championship sides? Yep, you guessed it - a glamour tie to Derby away, and on Valentine's weekend... I think there might well be a few people bribing their other halves for this one!.

I'll be back later in the week with the Millwall write up.