FA Cup / Frank Gregan / 20 January 2010 /

Frank Gregan muses on the possibility of a wild outsider going all the way

They say you should never give up on your dream. The part of the job that I used to hate was telling youngsters when they had finished with the academy that they would not be getting a contract. You always end those interviews with a condescending platitude, something along the lines of "go and prove us wrong, keep working hard and you'll get another chance." Of course it very rarely happens.

But it can and there were two great examples of dreams coming true in football last week. The first was Brian McDermott leading his Reading side to victory in the FA Cup at Anfield. It has been a long hard slog for Brian. I remember locking horns with him when he was the manager of Woking and after he left the club sitting with him in a boardroom somewhere watching the half time scores come in. By this time he was Chief Scout at Reading and when he saw that Woking were winning he turned to me smiling and said "that's what happens when you get a decent gaffer in!"

He has done the hard yards during his nine-and-a-half years at Reading. He'll have taken in four games a week in every corner of the country and would probably have had to change his tyres every three months! There is nothing glamorous about traipsing the length and breadth of the country, eating at motorway service stations and getting in at three in the morning and having to be up the next day for training. It's a slog that he has endured and now McDermott is reaping his reward. The win at Anfield was pay back for all his hard graft.

The other dream come true happened on Saturday. Falkirk travelled to Celtic Park for a game in which few gave them a chance. They performed admirably, earning a 1-1 draw. There was a young lad who came on as a substitute for Falkirk in front of a 50,000 crowd who must have been pinching himself.

Twenty-one-year-old Jack Compton had failed to make the grade at both Portsmouth and West Brom. Like hundreds of others in the non-league game, he was trying to rekindle his career with perennial Conference South strugglers Weston Super Mare. Things were not looking good for him but he's certainly enjoyed an upturn in fortune. Less than two months ago he was involved in an 'incident' with his skipper in an FA Trophy tie at Carshalton in front of only 214 hardy souls, which resulted in his skipper getting his marching orders!

However, his performances were earning rave reviews and the interest in him wasn't only from North of the border. Newcastle offered him the chance to go up for a trial and Exeter City were also touted to be after him. When you have been shown the door at Football League clubs you quickly learn to follow the old 'bird in the hand' maxim and he chose to pass on Newcastle's offer and sign for Falkirk as soon as the transfer window opened. From playing at Carshalton Athletic to Celtic Park in the space of two months - now that is the stuff that dreams are made of!

It could well be a dream weekend for the minnows at the weekend with the FA Cup taking centre stage again. A very interesting FA Cup market is the Big Four V The Field. Only Chelsea and Arsenal remain out of the Big Four and consequently having been traded as short as [1.54] it is now likely that a match could be attained at [2.8] for one of them to lift the trophy.

This is a good stage to look at the draw and pick a big outsider or two that could be decent in play trades should they negotiate the next couple of rounds and make the last eight. The recommendation is to back Ipswich at [280.0] and Reading at [300.0]. It would be a case of a dream come true if either of those two were to lift the trophy and that doesn't happen in football...or does it?

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