Who ate all the pies? Certainly not Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba or Roman Abramovich. Barnsley had promised to lay on a traditional Yorkshire welcome for their opponents, who are 36 places above them in the Football League, but a triumvirate who have been integral to Chelsea’s recent diet of success stayed away and watched on television as their colleagues were afforded the hospitality of a cute game plan, a rutted pitch and unremitting conviction. It made for fantastic fare, refreshing a menu that has become overstuffed with the same clubs and the same winners as football had started to eat itself.

This was like a journey back in time. A big, burly striker allowed to jump fairly with a goalkeeper to head home the winner, fans invading the pitch to carry their heroes off, FA Cup holders humbled at a windy lower-league outpost, champagne in the giant-killers’ dressing-room. The chasm between nonLeague and top flight when Ronnie Radford hit Hereford United’s winner against Newcastle United in 1972 probably equates to that between the Coca-Cola Championship and the Champions League today, but Barnsley, building on the belief they banked at Anfield last month, closed the gap and did football a favour.

The conquerors of Liverpool proved that that triumph was no fluke and the post mortem into Chelsea’s fallibility should not overshadow Barnsley’s glory. This was as much about what Simon Davey’s team did right as what Chelsea did wrong. The Barnsley folk who poured out on to the pitch may bring their club a slap on the wrist, but as one cheeky fan smacked Carlo Cudicini on his backside, is football not sometimes best viewed from the bottom up? Celebrating a wider spread of winners brings greater diversity, more colour, more intrigue – it holds up the rich from getting richer and offers more hope for a greater number.

“We hope we have put the FA Cup back up there [on a pedestal],” Davey, the Barnsley manager, said. “It has always been a top Premier League team, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal or Chelsea who have won it [since 1995]. We have put Liverpool out and now Chelsea. We are making dreams come true. Perhaps the gap is not as big as people make out. We are putting the magic back in the Cup.”

In keeping with this season’s wonderfully romantic competition, Saturday’s fulminating tie posted a magnificent reminder that all that glistens is not always gold. Even with Lampard and Drogba held back, Avram Grant named a Chelsea XI that cost £107 million but was undone by a £200,000 striker scoring his first goal in six months and 29 matches.

Kayode Odejayi has more in common with Ade Akinbiyi, his second cousin, than just a powerful runner’s physique. He has had to cope with criticism from the terraces since signing from Cheltenham Town last summer, but the son of a Christian minister who missed this game while away on clerical duties in Nigeria has kept his faith. “I say my prayers every morning and every night,” the striker said. “And I say a prayer before going out on to the pitch. It has worked wonders today. Hopefully I have repaid the faith shown in me by the manager. Over the 90 minutes, we thoroughly deserved it.”

It was the glory rather than the money – Saturday’s £300,000 yield made the Cup run worth £1 million to Barnsley to date, before the trip to Wembley for their semi-final – that motivated their players and turned this match into a film script. They were chasing their Chelsea shirts down in the players’ tunnel afterwards, but during the match they were trying to get into them. The Coca-Cola Championship players harried and hassled constantly, but they also carried out a game plan to perfection and earned their victory, creating the better chances and reducing Chelsea to a misshapen shambles by the end.

Davey built his team around Brian Howard, the match-winner at Anfield in the previous round, who strutted his stuff behind the front two, denying Michael Essien too much time, while Bobby Hassell anchored the midfield and Martin Devaney and Jamal Campbell-Ryce worked themselves into the ground up and down the flanks. The back four headed anything that moved and the front two chased lost causes all evening.

Istvan Ferenczi shot against a post from one of four Barnsley chances in the first period before Joe Cole started getting in behind the home team from wide on the right, but it was not until the 53rd minute that Nicolas Anelka mustered Chelsea’s first shot on target. Then came the winning moment. Michael Ballack failed to close down Devaney and Marciano van Homoet provided an intelligent overlap before the former Cheltenham winger delivered a cross to the far post, where Odejayi outjumped Cudicini and headed in to cause the kind of celebration probably not witnessed in Barnsley since they won the Cup 96 years ago.

“We weren’t just lucky, we were brilliant and I did not have a great deal to do,” Luke Steele, the goalkeeper on loan from West Bromwich Albion, who has conceded only two goals in five games since making his Barnsley debut at Anfield, said. “It’s not as if I kept us in the game, I did what I had to do. I’m really pleased with the clean sheet, but the lads were magnificent.”

How they rated

Barnsley (4-3-1-2): L Steele 7 M van Homoet 7 S Foster 7 D Souza 8 R Kozluk Y 8 J Campbell-Ryce 7 R Hassell 7 M Devaney 7 B Howard 8 I Ferenczi 7 K Odejayi 8 Substitutes: S Togwell (for Devaney, 72min), M Coulson (for Odejayi, 80) Not used: D Nardiello, J Butterfield, D Leon.

Chelsea (4-3-3): C Cudicini 4 J Belletti 4 R Carvalho Y 5 J Terry 5 W Bridge 7 S Wright-Phillips 5 M Essien 5 M Ballack 5 J Cole 7 N Anelka 5 F Malouda 4 Substitutes: S Kalou 5 (for Malouda, 62min), C Pizarro (for Belletti, 74). Not used: Hilário, J O Mikel, T Ben Haim.

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