NEITHER Benitez nor Ferguson could stop Everton on their charge to Wembley last season. On Saturday, however, the pair combined to ensure there would be no instant FA Cup final return for David Moyes’s men.

The competition reverted to type under the Goodison manager as his team’s growing momentum was brought to a shuddering and surprising halt as a rollercoaster campaign plummeted to another low.

Even though Liverpool and Manchester United, opponents Everton vanquished on the road to the final last year, had already fallen by the wayside, Moyes warned that the money being pumped into the Premier League meant it would be more difficult than ever to lift the famous old trophy.

Sadly, his players had clearly not been listening. How else to explain the woeful first-half performance that left Everton too much to do after the interval as, for the fourth time in the last six seasons, Moyes’s side were sent tumbling out of the competition on their own turf?

Having comprehensively dismantled top-four aspirants Manchester City here just seven days earlier, confidence was coursing through the veins of an Everton team playing their best football of the season as their lengthy injury list finally begins to ease.

And then this. Moyes always insists the focus for Everton is the Premier League, but the thrilling run to the final last year had engendered a feelgood factor and a renewed sense of belief throughout the club that underlined the value of lengthy cup involvement.

It made their approach in the first half on Saturday all the more alarming. Listless, guileless and lacking any sense of urgency, it was the polar opposite of the effervescent, classy display that had helped the same starting line-up see off City.

Moyes’s men can’t say they hadn’t been warned. Under Alex McLeish, Birmingham City have become a tough proposition in recent months while demonstrating the kind of qualities that proved the catalyst for Everton’s initial revival under Moyes. Supremely resilient in defence, combative in midfield and sprinkled with genuine attacking talent, the Midlanders fully deserved their first win at Goodison since 1957 and have now gone 15 games without defeat. No wonder the travelling fans sang “we are unbeatable”.

And Everton are unlikely to concede two better goals to an away team this season than those netted by Birmingham during their decisive first-half display.

The opener on seven minutes came from a counter-attack that was started and finished by Christian Benitez.

Gaining possession deep in his own half, Benitez shrugged off a foul challenge by Steven Pienaar – referee Howard Webb playing a good advantage – and fed Barry Ferguson, who instantly switched the play out wide right to Keith Fahey. The winger’s inviting cross then evaded the efforts of Leighton Baines to clear, and Benitez, having continued his run forward, headed beyond Tim Howard at the far post.

But if that was good, their second, five minutes before half-time, was genuinely outstanding, another incisive passing move ending with Ferguson dummying Sebastian Larsson’s low cross from the right and running into space on to a clever flick from James McFadden before sidefooting coolly past Howard.

Sure, Everton roused themselves for a second-half fightback that, with a little more accuracy in front of goal, could have at least ensured another crack in the replay.

But that would have masked the shortcomings of the opening 45 minutes that prompted a spate of jeers at the half-time whistle from the home crowd, a rare encouraging period of pressure that culminated with Baines ballooning a cross into the Gwaldys Street End encapsulating Everton’s first-half stupor.