by Sean Whetstone
It’s very hard to find much magic in this the FA Cup these days.
And the short reason why is it doesn’t matter to anyone anymore.
Not to the big clubs, who between them win it every year, celebrate for a couple of hours and forget it.
Not to the medium-size clubs who never win anything but spurn the opportunity each season to put a famous piece of silverware in their trophy cabinet because the bigger clubs field under-strength sides in the early rounds.
They simply respond by naming under-strength line-ups themselves.
Not to the small clubs, who are more concerned with banking the cash from the odd televised home game or a trip to a big stadium than they are with writing themselves into the history books
And, most significantly, not to the fans, who now see the old competition as an irrelevance purely because time has moved on and there are bigger fish to fry – the Premier League title, the Champions League, avoiding relegation, winning promotion from the Championship.
The FA Cup Final itself was once what the Super Bowl is to American sports fans, the television showcase of the year.
Now you can watch live football almost 24 hours a day and Cup Final Saturday resides in the graveyard occupied by those previously “must-see” TV events.
This season it has proved even less magic with no supporters, no gate money, reduced prize money and drawing the fourth and fifth round together.
I would forgive David Moyes in resting as many of the first-team regulars as possible knowing we have to face Manchester United or Liverpool in the next round before we have even played Doncaster Rovers.
That the fourth and fifth rounds of the competition were drawn at the same time was just a bad joke which reduced the FA Cup’s importance and relativity even further.
Hear, hear. Sad but true, Sean. So many things aren’t as they used to be. Best music, jobs, TV, all sport, all happened when I was a teenager and in my twenties. But this was a long time ago. Now we all know what’s going to happen and we have figures to show what people want. The fairytale of the FA Cup is now reduced to lower teams getting ‘loads’ of money for their early round appearance against the mighty Derby County reserves. No amount of statistics and being told interesting facts by old commentators really whips up any enthusiasm from this (now casual) observer. Used to be great when Kenneth Wolstenholme was commentating on the only game on the telly. When the players knew this was their chance to be seen and put in their best performances. Thank goodness Barry Davies is no longer telling us about how we all remember Chelsea v Leeds in 1970. True up until 1975, but less so for the next 35 years. Times have changed. We’ve all become older. But it is so very true that magic has gone from this competition.
COYI
Utter rubbish, I’d love for us to win the cup, and so would you. The run we had under Bilic in 15/16 with the extra time win over Liverpool and Payet’s free kick at Old Trafford was brilliant. If you wrote this about the League Cup then I agree. You’ll soon change your tune if we somehow get to the final this year!
LIKE TO WIN ANYTHING BUYT THE MAGIC HAS GONE TIL QUARTERS AND SEMIS FOR ME – Meaningless competition wehen you put out weakened teams. I’m looking forward to Tueday night rather than this one
We haven’t put out that weak a team in either tie, Moyes is taking it more seriously than previous managers I think.
The title of your article sums it up nicely. It should be called the Sweet FA Cup now.
If we lose this match against Doncaster with a weak team I shall never forget that we have been pooed upon yet again . This is definitely not the time to field a weak team . As a fan I want to see us at Wembley . We are in a position where we can worry just that little bit less .
The FA cup is massive for us ; stop devaluing it . A win would see us in Europe despite our league position . Would be nice to see a bit more positivity .
Well it’s important to me,and it’s important to my mates.
A souless omment – call yourself a fan? you’re everything that’s wrong with football these days.
Clearly not as important as it was years ago but I loved the bully clique creaming their pants on whtid lol , pathetic bunch of sheep on whtid ! Especially HH , the strange autistic German guy . What a teat .