City's aversion to Cup runs under Peter Taylor continues, albeit in unlucky fashion this time as a changed squad give the Welshmen a second half battering but can't secure a winner.  Defeat on penalties was inevitable. 

It's a bit different being a City supporter these days. You don't have to be embarrassed about it. Gone are the days of buying a copy of the Sports Mail with a banner headline on the front about a defeat at relegated Donny, the newsagent taking pity on your embarrassed smirk and kindly inserting the offending green 'un between the covers of 'Pregnant Asian lesbians' lactating' in order to spare your blushes. Or as you hear your boss's footsteps behind you at your computer and he stares suspiciously at your computer screen where you've just in time managed to close down tiger-chat and he asks you what the hell you're doing, you innocently point out that you're downloading pornography as you stare fixedly at 'Floss with my thong.' In the past, when coming home after an unexpectedly late finish muttering about overweight footballers and missed opportunities you'd have tried to convince your beloved that you'd been nowhere near a Hull City game and had merely spent a normal evening at a brothel. But now it's different. Last night required no such deception. My girlfriend's in Scotland.

But things ARE different now, we play better against better opponents, and we normally win. That we didn't last night was because we missed our chances in the second half and in a scoreless extra time and then missed our penalties after that. We didn't win last night, but we should have done, and we'll win plenty more if we keep doing what we now do.

One thing that doesn't change is the general downsizing of Cup games as priorities. Reading the programme, as Peter Taylor talked about 'wanting a big club in the next round' and 'a number of players picked up knocks on Saturday so they might need to sit this one out' you could see his nose increasingly extend towards you from his cheerily smiling photograph. But it would be wrong to blame the manager for this, the culture of English football continues to change, as we become more continental we care more about leagues and we care less about cups and we couldn't care less about League Cups. You don't believe me, you ask the 10,000 who turned up last Saturday but didn't bother last night. You ask yourself.

Not that Taylor's notes were completely Pinocchio. He informed us that Wrexham manager Denis Smith 'always produces a team that plays the right way' and this proved to be spot on. Given that extra time meant that both teams had to play each way twice through the course of the night, I'm here to tell you that the well-drilled Welshmen faced the right way each time, a tribute to their manager's chalk board diagram preparations.

We lined up thus:

Duke
Joseph Cort Delaney Edge
Price Ashbee Keane France
Walters Facey

That lineup played rather how you'd expect. Not very well. There was a lack of understanding from players unfamiliar with each other and out of position. France was anonymous, Price looked completely out of sorts, Edge looked, well, edgy and this perhaps affected the whole backline, behind which Duke was something of a hazard; fresh as a daisy he should have been after Saturday's brief outing, but he was a Jessie coming out for crosses and had the pace of a car slowed by too many crates of illicit moonshine stashed in the boot. I hope Bo is back for Saturday.

Not until the second half, at 2-1 down, did we start to get any momentum, as the manager improved things by moving up France to play just off the strikers and then, on the hour, taking Edge off for Dawson to take his place on the left edge and taking off the hard-working but by now bubble-blowing Facey for Elliott to play as a striker. Green came on for Price after 75 minutes and it was no coincidence that the closer we got to our first choice team, the better we played, bossing both the second half and extra- time.

It looked rather different in the first half. A nothing cross came from the Wrex right, no challenges were made on the consistently troublesome Hector Sam and he headed past Duke whose awkward sprawl resembled nothing so much as a man trying to climb through the front side window of a car after the doors have, for no adequately explained reason, been welded shut. Their second goal was cut from the same slovenly defensive cloth, this time on our right. Andy Holt, formerly of this parish, advanced well, waited for the tackle from Price that never came, waited for the cover from Joseph that didn't materialise, got tired of all that waiting around and pinged in a very nice cross. Cort and Delaney were again absent and Ferguson's shot was hit crisply past Duke who got about as close to it as a bumbling sheriff from the Deep South going 'Tzchook, tzchook, tzchuuuk' ever got to catching a couple of good ol' boys who wouldn't change if they could and were fighting the system like two modern day Robin Hoods. Yee-haa.

The fact that Wrexham failed to make the most of other opportunities, most notably when the defence again stood like statues as a cross came in and Duke stood as statuesque as Catherine Bach but less pleasing on the eye as the ball looped over him and the bar, meant that they were never out of sight of us. And importantly when we did get forward we were always dangerous and one of these forays produced the goal that split their first-half two. Ashbee did well in the middle to find Facey who put in Walters free but wide behind their defence. He controlled well, got the pull back to the advancing Facey who smeared it diagonally across both area and goal to where Michael Keane popped up to slide it in at the back post.

Keane could not be said to have had a quiet debut. In the second half he played more towards the left, found space for himself, swung in a good cross on to the head of the advanced France and that was 2-2. He also got in some meaty tackles and showed a decent awareness of where his team mates where, or sometimes a Barmby-esque idea of where they should have been. But there are buts. On last night's evidence he is completely left footed, in a real, make-a-complete-clockwise-circle-to-get-the-ball-where-you-want-it way, and as the game went on the opposition got wise to this and he was increasingly caught in possession. But that's not the most noteworthy thing about him. Barmby arrived here clearly not match fit. Facey is plainly powerful but chunkily overweight. Keane is a fat bastard. Given his lack of height, if he is described as looking like a Napoleon in midfield the reporter is not necessarily describing qualities of generalship. Not that he lacks confidence; after both his goal and his assist he ran over to the East Stand, lifting his badge from his chest and then turning to point to his name on the back of his shirt. To be charitable he has perhaps heard that tiger-chat match reporters are middle-aged men with failing eyesight and drink-ruined minds and he wanted to be sure that the man on duty got right both the name of the scorer and for whom he was playing. But to be honest it looked like someone working a bit too hard to be an instant fans' favourite. If so, he needs to bear in mind that cult heroes are made by fans not by players and that players have got to earn it first. But he should be the better for last night. When the first substitutions were made after an hour he looked ready to jog off and take the plaudits; the manager had other ideas and Keane's game was only half way through.

At least he'll remember his night with more fondness than Walters. The willing striker ran hard and intelligently, showed for the ball constantly, but could not buy a goal on eBay. In the first half a good shot hit Facey and was deflected wide and his team mates gave him sympathetic pats on the back. In the second he blasted over the bar from 2 yards out and elderly custodian of the leather Dibble nowhere. His team mates held their heads and shouted at him. In the last minute of ordinary time France found Joseph who, as he had done much of the night, got forward well and got in a nicely shaped cross on to the forehead of our forward who, with only Dibble to beat, glanced it wide when it again looked easier to score. His team mates pressed a fistful of Prozac and a glass of water on him and he swallowed both greedily. In the first period of extra time he got one-on-one with Dibble, who ironically for cartoon fans was positively cat-like for much of the night and produced an excellent stop. His team mates booked Walters 3 sessions with a psychiatrist, which they then supplanted with 6 rounds of electro-convulsive therapy when, a minute later in a goal-mouth melee, he lifted the ball over the prostrate keeper only to see it hooked off the line by a defender facing his own goal. When he gamely stepped up to take the crucial penalty that we had to score to keep us in the shoot out after Dibbled has saved from Dawson and Joseph, it was entirely predictable that he chipped it gently into the netman's grasp. After this Ashbee handed him a pearl-handled revolver with one bullet in the chamber which the grateful striker aimed at his own head, the bullet flying past his left earhole before burying itself in the south west corner digital thermometer and clock.

A dreadful night for young Jon, then, but to his eternal credit he kept working instead of lying down half way through and sobbing like a marathon runner who's just found out that everyone else is faster than she is and it's hot and it's uphill and someone should have said. . He wasn't the only dodgy marksman either, France, Delaney and Elliott all had chances to win it in late in the second half as we had them in our grip. I really hope the misses don't haunt Walters, as he deserves better nights than this.

And in terms of the result, so do we. We'll get them, too, when our first choice players are back and once our reserves have collectively shed around 11 stone. But last night, first half apart, was entertaining and engaging and it's still cool to be a tiger.

HULL CITY (4-4-2): Duke; Joseph, Cort, Delaney, Edge; Price, Ashbee, Keane, France; Walters, Facey.  Subs: Dawson (for Edge, 60), Elliott (for Facey, 60), Green (for Price, 74), Allsopp, Hinds.

Goals: Keane 22; France 66

Booked: None

Sent Off: None

WREXHAM: Dibble, Roberts, Carey, Pejic, Bennett, Smith, Williams, Ferguson, Holt, Armstrong, Sam.  Subs: Mackin (for Roberts, 50), Llewellyn (for Sam, 78), Spender (for Smith, 94), Baker, Jones.

Goals: Sam 14, Ferguson 35

Booked: Bennett

Sent Off: None

REFEREE: A Kaye

ATTENDANCE: 6,079