FOR all the moments Everton FC’s 2009 FA Cup run brought, the competition has bitter-sweet memories for David Moyes.

Three seasons ago the Scot came the closest yet to breaking his trophy duck at Goodison Park but even Louis Saha scoring the fastest FA Cup final goal in the history of football’s oldest competition, Everton went on to lose 2-1 to Guus Hiddink’s Chelsea side and it arguably could have been worse had Florent Malouda’s third not been wrongly disallowed (replays showed that his effort was over the goal-line).

But while Evertonians were able to celebrate a dramatic penalty shootout success over an albeit depleted Manchester United side at Wembley that season plus a famous derby success over Liverpool, now tempered somewhat given that the winner came from Dan Gosling seeing as the youngster left Goodison under a cloud, results in the competition have not always been kind to Moyes.

Apart from that run to the final in 2009, Everton have not made it into the last eight of the competition and have been humiliatingly dumped out at the third round stage on three separate occasions.

In Moyes’ first FA Cup tie in charge of Everton, they suffered a 2-1 defeat at Conference-bound Shrewsbury Town and given that former Goodison skipper Kevin Ratcliffe’s side were three divisions below their opponents it remains in terms of the opposition, the worst result in the club’s history.

Other early exits followed at Goodison both in 2007 against Blackburn Rovers (4-1) and Oldham Athletic a year later when the League One Latics recorded a shock 1-0 victory.