FA Cup - Nottingham Forest 0 - Manchester City 2: What Would the World Be Like Without Bars?

Bars.

Bars are a lot of things - good things. A bar can be the watering hole in which you bond with friends after a long day at work. Hip-hop bars separate the finest lyricists from the middling. Passing the bar qualifies you to practice law.

See, so many great bars!

None of these great bars would matter to Nottingham Forest, though, because the bar they came across is what kept them out of an FA Cup Final at Wembley. A final appearance would have been the club's first FA Cup final appearance since 1991, where they would have been hoping for a win as they had in 1959.

This was an FA Cup final clash unlike Villa vs Crystal Palace. This one was instead, pitting an unfancied underdog punching above its weight class vs a wounded, limping protagonist stumbling through the growing pains of an overdue transition.

When Rico Lewis put City up on minute 2, it seemed as though it could be one of those evenings where it all unraveled like a loose thread for Forest and they were in for a hiding. Of course, nobody watching Forest this season would believe that. This team is a defensive fortress, a sturdy mahogany fence. But shit happens, no? After all, wasn’t this the same Nottingham Forest that shipped 5-0 to Bournemouth? Shit happens. Fortresses crumble from the wind sometimes.

But it didn’t, in fact, turn into one of those evenings.

Instead, it turned into one of those other evenings. You know the ones where nothing just goes in? Suddenly, the gaping hole of the goal seems to shrink, and instead, the bars assume this girth of an overgrown Eucalyptus. Because how would you explain Morgan Gibbs-White striking the post after beating Ortega?

The angle was against him, true, but nine times out of ten, a player of Gibbs-White’s quality squirms that in for 2-1.

This was the second time he did it by the way. His first was a curler which he caught sweetly and delicately from Elanga’s cross. That shot hit the junction of the upright and the crossbar.

Later, Awoniyi would then join in the fun, hitting the bar. Yes, one of those evenings.

Bars, that was where they could have been headed if all had gone in. Instead, that was what stopped them from a final against Crystal Palace. One would imagine neutrals would have loved a Palace-Forest final. No favorites, just pure football, like the old times.

Nottingham Forest clawed their way out of the relegation scrap into Champions League places this season, a great achievement by NunoEspirito Santo, and seeing them take the game to City, in defiance of the reverence that City command, was a joy to watch. Don’t they know it is required to defer to these sky blues? Where is the supplication? The boot-licking? The resignation? The docility?

Such a strange sight, seeing City pushed up against the wall like that, like seeing a polar bear in the streets of Manchester – some things just don’t fit.

But they did more than enough to win, City. Gvardiol, City’s wild card attacking threat, headed home from a Marmoush corner early in the second half to put the game beyond Forest and ensure City head back to Wembley for their only shot at silverware this season.

The Citizens would be very grateful for the invention of bars - all of them. It is at the bar that they might celebrate this victory. Their lawyers, the people standing between them and the consequences of 115 charges, all passed the bar I would presume. And maybe, they will sing a bar or two to celebrate reaching the final. And of course, they will be highly indebted to the bars between which Ortega stood for, somehow, being their last line of defense.