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Knock-out cup?

Dave Bowler

1/10/08

Earlier on this season, we had reason to debate whether or not the League Cup should be quietly put out to pasture - a competition that had outlived its usefulness, was no longer taken seriously by the majority of clubs and was treated as a burden on supporters who have already laid out far too much cash to follow their club already. As it turns out, we were talking about the FA Cup as well.

Up and down the country on third round day, we saw great swathes of empty seats in stadium after stadium, the football supporters of this country turning up their collective noses at having to fork out yet more money to watch too many teams fielding too many reserves, and reserves who were only going through the motions at that. Where’s the fun in that?

The culture of football has changed in so many ways in the last decade or so and the FA Cup has become a huge casualty of those changes, not least because so many who go to games now do so with a season ticket rather than by paying on the day. Getting out of that habit and having to pay out such large sums in advance of the season means that plenty of fans no longer want to put their hands in their pockets and shell out good money on cup tie days. And with the total lack of respect demonstrated for the competition by the teams at the top of the football pyramid, you can understand the cynicism with which supporters treat it.

In the past, third round day above all others was the most thrilling in the calendar, blood and thunder ties between the aristocracy and the lower orders, days when bizarre upsets might happen, days that built the reputation of the FA Cup as the greatest cup competition in the world. That’s a reputation that’s looking just a little bit tarnished these days.

We’ve reached the point where giant killings are greeted with little more than a shrug. Ten years ago, if Everton had lost to a team that is languishing in 13th place in what is now League One, the manager would have been clearing his desk on the Monday afternoon, the players would have had all the days off for the next two months cancelled and Everton fans would have crawled into any hole they could find in Liverpool - add your own joke here.

But in 2008? David Moyes shrugs it off, there’s barely a whimper of rage from the crowd, a few disgruntled calls to a couple of phone ins, and that’s it. That’s it. For departing from the FA Cup on home soil against a team 50 places lower in the pyramid. The one prestigious prize that Everton have any hope of winning in the next decade - we’ve already concluded that the League Cup really doesn’t count any more. It’s more important - and more memorable for your fans - to go and grind out a league draw at Ewood Park or White Hart Lane than try to get to Wembley?

Everton are not alone of course. With all due respect to Bryan Robson’s team, the Bolton Wanderers that Sheffield United faced looked more like a bunch of footballers on a bonus to lose rather than win their FA Cup tie. Yes, Bolton will say that they have bigger fish to fry by trying to stave off relegation but does winning a cup game make that any more difficult? Especially given that on fourth round day, Gary Megson will likely have his men up for a bracing swim in an ice cold lake at seven in the morning, followed by a 20 mile run up and down sand dunes, and then an evening’s mountaineering to finish off. Does one more game really take that much out of highly tuned professional athletes? Or maybe some of the Premier League’s clubs simply don’t think they are good enough to win the FA Cup and simply throw in the towel at the first opportunity. Good to see the Olympian spirit of the importance of taking part lives on.

The way in which the Premier League has become the be all and end all of everything in English football has disfigured the landscape and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. If you were Fulham or Bolton, as a fan, wouldn’t you accept relegation if it meant that in the same season you could get to the FA Cup Final, an achievement that will go down in the books for all time? If the answer is no, then it really is time to pack it all in and just play league football, because this really has become an industry and not the romantic game it once was. At which point, we might be better off watching the FTSE instead of the FA Cup.