EVERTONIANS needn’t bother to “tell their Ma” to put the champagne on ice this season. It’s more a case of putting back in the cellar because David Moyes’s men won’t be going to Wembley once never mind twice.

January isn’t even over but Merseyside’s FA Cup dreams are for 2010 after slumbering Everton snoozed through the first half of Saturday’s tie at Goodison Park.

Having come tantalisingly close to lifting this trophy last season, Everton threw the kitchen sink at Birmingham after the interval but after a non-existent display before the break it was too little, too late.

Birmingham of course did go into this game on the back of a 14-match unbeaten run but since their derby defeat at Goodison on November 29, Everton themselves had not lost in nine matches – discounting the reversal in the Europa League dead-rubber against BATE when a number of fringe players were given run-outs.

If you’re going to win the FA Cup – and with Manchester United and Liverpool who Everton defeated last season already third round casualties – you’ve got to expect to progress in home ties against Birmingham.

The last time the second club of England’s second city triumphed at Goodison on November 16 1957, The Crickets’ “That’ll be the day” was a first UK number one for Buddy Holly.

With the experience gained from last year’s impressive run, the FA Cup was surely the most likely route to silverware for an Everton side seemingly just returning to form and fitness after months of horrific injury blows.

Unlike their European campaign of two seasons ago when the UEFA Cup was there for the taking with Rangers reaching the final only to lose to a Zenit St Petersburg side Everton had defeated in the group stages, the knockout stages of this term’s revamped Europa League are full of daunting names from the continental game’s elite.

On the domestic front – despite Andy Gray’s outlandish claim last week that Everton can still challenge for a top four spot in the Premier League this season – Moyes’s men will be hard pressed to go much further than overtaking Saturday’s conquerors Birmingham in eighth place thus making a fourth successive European qualification a stiff proposition.

The hosts just never got going in the opening period and the player that suffered the most was Diniyar Bilyaletdinov – hauled off for goalscorer Leon Osman after 45 minutes.

If the former Lokomotiv Moscow man is still struggling for consistency in the Premier League, his baptism in the FA Cup has been a particularly painful lesson.

Woefully off the pace against Carlisle, he admitted to Moyes straight after that game that he’d been below par and the manager was at least encouraged by his honesty and willingness to do better.

Despite an impressive display against Manchester City a week earlier – albeit one in which he wasn’t wearing his shooting boots – Bilyaletdinov looked lost in the cut and thrust of this encounter.

Another Russian winger messed up in a fourth round FA Cup exit for Everton at Goodison in 1997 and within days his spell at the club was over.