Quite simply a very weird FA Cup quarter-final, right up until it wasn’t.

At no point during the entirety of this game between two of the season’s overachievers in Brighton and Nottingham Forest did it really feel like it was going to end in any other way than penalties. Somehow, though, we were still surprised when it went to penalties.

It just seemed if anything too obvious, Clive, in a game that spent 120 minutes and more eschewing the obvious. It was clear something wasn’t quite right from the moment early in the game when the realisation dawned that Forest were dominating possession against Brighton. Which doesn’t sound right at all, does it?

Once it went to penalties, all logic told you Forest had to the be the likelier winners having already got through two shoot-outs in this year’s FA Cup alone and in fact having never lost one ever in this competition. Chuck in defeats for Brighton in each of their three (now four) shoot-outs and it became so clear that Forest would win the shoot-out that we instantly decided Brighton would.

They did benefit from the double-toss advantage of shooting at their own fans and going first, but that never really felt like enough of a leveller.

And based on what was in the end well over a 130-minute football match, it was hard to argue that Forest hadn’t deserved to progress. For all but the second half of extra-time when Brighton appeared to belatedly realise what was about to happen to them and set about trying to score with a gusto and gumption that, we might humbly suggest, they could perhaps have considered deploying earlier in the piece.

We enjoyed it all immensely, to be honest, but get the distinct impression from the coverage and wider reaction that this is because we too are weird.

It was not by any rational measure a good game of football. Brighton were largely disappointing until their late flurry of activity. Their first-half tactic of not having the ball very much at all appeared intentional and isn’t the worst policy against a Nottingham Forest team that very much enjoys playing on the counter. But it was also deeply negative, doing more to negate their own customary strengths than to nullify Nottingham Forest’s.

Not least because this Nottingham Forest team did not in fact look very much like this season’s very successful Nottingham Forest teams have generally looked. There was no Chris Wood, ruled out by injury on New Zealand duty, while both Anthony Elanga and Callum Hudson-Odoi were only on the bench.

You did feel for Taiwo Awoniyi, a man forced to spend all season watching Wood’s highlight-reel of a campaign and then finally getting his chance here but deprived of the service from wide that Wood has enjoyed so very much all season long.

Morgan Gibbs-White, too, looked a man slightly at a loss, picking up possession in his customary way, in the half-spaces on the half-turn, yet looking up and seeing none of the usual suspects to which he has then turned to such devastatingly productive effect this season.

To add to Awoniyi’s unfortunate afternoon, he made way at the precise moment Elanga and Hudson-Odoi were introduced on the hour. It significantly if not decisively altered the course of the game, with Forest almost instantly being awarded a penalty that, in keeping with the overall theme of the evening, was then overturned after a VAR intervention presumably because it was just too weird a looking thing for anyone to actually accept as a foul. Even though we kind of think it actually was one, you know.

We spent much of the afternoon at odds with the general tone of the BBC coverage here, but never more pointedly than here. We genuinely thought it was a penalty. Kaoru Mitoma’s lunge was wildly unnecessary and uncontrolled, and the fact he committed the foul with his arm rather than leg appeared to be considered a key pillar of Mitoma’s defence rather than powerful evidence of just how out of control the challenge was.

The bizarro-world vibe continued with Theo Walcott punditing about Mitoma’s arm being in a natural position, which we’re almost certain doesn’t apply when you use it to foul someone rather than for a common-or-garden handball. But he speaks well, doesn’t he? Maybe he is right. Made us doubt ourselves.

It was not alone in the weird stakes. In no particular order, other weirdnesses included:

* The clock reaching 100 minutes twice.

* Carlos Baleba obliterating a camera with a rare Brighton shot late in the first half.

* Brighton suddenly and wildly coming to life for the final 15 minutes of extra time having only at that moment apparently realised this was a cup tie.

* Matt Upson’s pronunciation of the word ‘afterWARDS’

* Adam Webster hobbling around for the final few minutes of normal time while conspicuously injured because Brighton had used up all their normal-time substitution windows.

* Brighton having used up their substitution windows because Georginio Rutter had injured himself quite nastily literally seconds after both Danny Welbeck and Mitoma had been withdrawn.

* Nottingham Forest substituting Gibbs-White – who went second after the absent here Wood in the two previous shoot-outs – in the last minute of extra-time to replace him with Morato.

* Gibbs-White getting booked because Morato took too long to actually come on to the pitch after said substitution.

* Morato then not taking any of the five Forest penalties in the shoot-out.

There were almost certainly some others we have now forgotten.

For Forest there remains the powerfully real prospect of an incredible season being one that would go down as their very best since casually winning back-to-back European Cups.

Especially if they can also win the semi-final and final on penalties as well. Something that shouldn’t be ruled out with Matz Sels involved. He guessed right for every single Brighton penalty, up to and including the one Diego Gomez lashed straight down the middle.

We’ve always had a bit of time for the ‘keepers should stand still sometimes in shoot-outs, because somebody always just whacks it down the middle’ concept, but can’t really recall it ever working out quite so wonderfully well as it did here.

It all prompted a delirious Gary Lineker to sign off the main BBC coverage as follows: ‘Matz Sels – he excels, on the seashore.’

Is that good? Or really quite sh*t? Fittingly, we really aren’t at all sure quite what to make of it.

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