Skating by

By all accounts, Coventry City outplayed West Ham Tuesday in the fourth round of the Carling Cup, but a stoppage time goal by Carlton Cole saw the Hammers win 2-1, pushing the team to the quarterfinals for the first time since 1999-2000. After Wednesday's action, the League Cup's final eight is now set. All eight are Premiership sides, not surprisingly.

I listened to the BBC Radio broadcast of the game via WHUTV. I just signed up for a club membership, and it comes with a three-month subscription to WHUTV. It's the first time that I have listened to a soccer match, and I found it a mostly satisfactory way of following the game. The announcers were understandably critical of West Ham's lackluster effort for most of the match. Fortunately, Coventry could not finish its many chances in the first period.

The refereeing was again a topic, and Rob Styles was again at the center of the chatter. Styles was the referee who gave Chelsea a much undeserved penalty shot against Liverpool a few weeks ago at Anfield. That enabled the Blues to forge a 1-1 draw. Tuesday night, Styles seemed to miss two huge calls, one for each side. Both the Guardian and the the Independent wrote about substitute Jonathan Spector flicking a ball on with his forearm during the play that led to Cole's winner. I have watched the highlights three times -- once each from Sky Sports, Fox Soccer Report and WHUTV -- and I did not get a good look at that aspect of the play on any of them. I thought that there would be a close shot of it on Fox Soccer Report, because they're usually pretty good about showing complete highlights, but there was nothing. Perhaps there just wasn't a good shot of the play. Neither paper mentioned the other play that probably should have resulted in a free kick for West Ham just outside the penalty area and a straight red card to Coventry, but the Telegraph did. I have seen the replay of this play several times, and it sure looked to me as if the final defender took Luis Boa Morte down. Boa Morte almost made it past him unscathed, but he was pitched forward by the defender's interference. The Times mentioned neither of these calls, but instead noted that the match also added to West Ham's injury list, with both centre-half Anton Ferdinand and midfielder Hayden Mullins knacked.

The draw for the quarterfinals is Saturday. Matches will be played Dec. 18-19, with the winners playing in two-legged ties in January.