One Everton player will flood to Carlisle United minds as FA Cup comes into focus | OneFootball

The young midfielder put on a fantastic display at Brunton Park in 2016.

Carlisle United are back in FA Cup action this weekend as they take on Wigan Athletic at Brunton Park.

The world's oldest cup competition hasn't been that nice to the Blues in recent years. Both this season's draw and last season's pitted them against tough League One opposition; last time it was Leyton Orient, this time it's the Latics.

That game versus Orient was a poor one for a couple of reasons. Obviously, being knocked out of the cup wasn't great, but it was also the game in which Callum Guy suffered his season-ending ACL injury. Thankfully, almost a year on, he's back playing football, and will probably be involved against Wigan.

Other FA Cup games in Carlisle's history also bring back strong memories. They narrowly lost at home to an Arsenal side that featured the likes of Dennis Bergkamp, Patrick Vieira, Ray Parlour, Robert Pirès and others in the 2000/01 third round.

However, despite all those glitzy names, none of their performances left as much of a lasting impression as the one that a then 23-year-old Ross Barkley put on when his Everton side visited Brunton Park in 2016.

Carlisle United vs Everton

This fourth-round match-up between the Blues and the Toffees was one that was shrouded in good faith and extremely poor actions.

Brunton Park had been flooded by Storm Desmond in late 2015, forcing a complete relay of the club's pitch in the middle of winter.

Everton's fans' forum, in the wake of the freak weather event that affected their fourth-round opponents, decided to rally together to try and help United, and ended up raising over £9000 to go towards helping to repair the damage caused by the floods.

It was a brilliant example of how football fans can come together to help one another, despite their allegiances.

Unfortunately, in complete contrast to that previous statement, a Carlisle fan was arrested a few days after the match for directing racist abuse at Everton players Arouna Kone and Steven Pienaar. Owen Newbury, the supporter in question, was handed a fine and a five-year banning order.

For good and bad reasons, the events of the game were clouded by matters that were completely unrelated to what happened during the game, which Everton won 3-0.

That shouldn't be the case, because Barkley put on one of the best performances that Brunton Park has ever witnessed that day.

Ross Barkley's masterful display at Brunton Park

To nobody's surprise, there was a big gulf in class between Carlisle and Everton. Roberto Martinez - the Toffees' manager - didn't even use players like John Stones or Romelu Lukaku during the game, but he really didn't need to; Barkley was the main man that day.

Of the three goals scored by the visitors, the now Aston Villa midfielder was comfortably the best. Kone tapped the ball into an open net from close range after just 93 seconds and Aaron Lennon, who set up the Ivorian international's goal, got one of his own around a dozen minutes later, with another calm finish from within the box.

What came before Lennon's goal, and indeed the assist by left-back Bryan Oviedo, was an inch-perfect ball by Barkley that started the scoring sequence.

He then put the game to bed in the second half with a goal of his own. Taking the ball on the half-turn, he took a couple of touches to get it out of his feet before pulling the trigger and sending it crashing into the top corner.

His effort did take a deflection off the shoulder of Mark Ellis, but don't let that take away from the technique with which he struck.

Carlisle had a couple of chances in the game thanks to Derek Asamoah, who scored against Everton's bitter rivals, Liverpool, in the EFL Cup just over four months prior, but he wasn't able to find the back of the net in this game.

No matter what the home side did, it would have been hard to overshadow the way that Barkley ran the game from the moment it started until the end of his time on the pitch, in the 75th minute. It truly was one of the best footballing displays that Cumbria has seen in recent times.