"Nobody, not us on the bench or those on the pitch, was being complacent. But after the way we'd dominated the match up until Freddie's goal, we just felt we'd be able to finish off the job. We fully expected Liverpool to come at us during the closing stages but all the same, we were just devastated when Owen first equalised and then scored the winner.

"Of course for me, I'd already had the personal disappointment of finding out I wasn't selected to start the match. Although the priority is always with the team and not the individual, I was of course pretty gutted when I found out. All the same, we have four world class forwards at the club and only two could play so someone had to miss out.

"In the end, I got on the pitch for a matter of a minute or so at the end by which time we were chasing to pull the scores level after Owen's winner. I hardly got a chance to touch the ball before the referee blew the final whistle. Needless to say this wasn't exactly the stuff of my FA Cup dreams.

"Where does this leave us? Well, in the short term we will travel up to the North East for Tuesday's match against Newcastle. We still need a point to guarantee ourselves a second place finish so that is a crucial match.

"As for the future, I don't know what will happen. It isn't really for me to say and I think for now we just need to remember that we were extremely unlucky yesterday. It isn't as if we were outplayed or anything. Perhaps it was just one of those days where it wasn't to be."