In Brief

FA Cup: Wolves through after beating Liverpool as Arsenal draw Man Utd

Premier League leaders exit competition following 2-1 defeat at Molineux

by The Week team

8 Jan 2019

Wolves striker Raul Jimenez opened the scoring in the FA Cup win against Liverpool

Catherine Ivill/Getty Images

Wolves 2 Liverpool 1

Wolves dumped Premier League leaders Liverpool out of the FA Cup last night, and another big gun looks set to fall in the fourth round after Arsenal were paired with Manchester United.

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That was the pick of the draw, a mouth-watering clash between two clubs who have won the FA Cup on 25 occasions. The Gunners’ 13 wins is a record that they will look to protect when they host United at the Emirates on the weekend of 26-27 January.

Derby draws

That isn’t the only enticing draw of the fourth round, with a London Premier League derby between Crystal Palace and Tottenham, and a North-West confrontation between Manchester City and Burnley.

Barnet, the only non-league team left in the competition, were drawn at home to Championship side Brentford. In terms of glamour, it could have been better for the north London outfit, but they will fancy their chances of progressing to the fifth round for the first time in the club’s history.

Wolves win

Wolves’ reward for beating Liverpool is a trip to play the winner of the replay between Shrewsbury and Stoke, a match they will relish after their morale-boosting win against the Reds.

Raul Jimenez gave the home side the lead shortly before the break, pouncing on an error from James Milner to fire home past Simon Mignolet in the visitors’ goal.

Ironically, Milner was one of the few experienced players in a Liverpool side that included three teenagers making their full debuts.

In total, manager Jurgen Klopp made nine changes to his starting XI, including the introduction of Dutch defender Ki-Jana Hoever, who at 16 is the club’s third-youngest debutant.

Klopp didn’t care

Divock Origi equalised for the visitors early in the second-half, but just four minutes later Wolves restored their lead with a thunderous strike from Ruben Neves.

In a searing indictment of what the FA Cup has become to some clubs, Klopp brushed off the defeat as a minor inconvenience compared with the serious business of the Premier League and Champions League.

“It’s all good,” he told reporters. “Of course, we don’t want to lose football games but it’s nothing else.”

That didn’t impress former England striker-turned-TV pundit Alan Shearer, who tweeted: “I was brought up watching Liverpool trying to win every trophy. Why should that change?”