The Magic of the FA Cup™ today features Manchester City v Fulham on BBC One. Of course it does. BT have to make do with Tranmere Rovers v Manchester United while back on the BBC later on we have Shrewsbury Town v Liverpool. Can you see a pattern of sorts?
Whichever channel gets coverage of Cup games, there are just two criteria. The first is that at least one team must be in the top four, or at the very least be a fading giant (I am talking about you, Manchester United and Arsenal), and preferably they should be playing away to a lower league club. You don’t need me to tell you why. It’s about the big teams always being on and the desire for an increasingly unlikely shock result.
Manchester City seems an unusual choice since they are the second best club in the country and probably the wealthiest on the planet and they are playing Fulham from the Championship. Can I ask a simple question? What is the fucking point of that.
Doubtless the pundits will be telling us that anything can happen in football and that Fulham have every chance of pulling off an upset but that would be as silly as listening to an interview with Len McCluskey and expecting something sensible. I am more than prepared to eat a hundredweight of humble pie if Fulham somehow win, but somehow I don’t think that will be necessary. I’ll go for a 7-0 win here. Who the hell cares about that game?
For a while, I thought the FA Cup was worth saving and indeed could be saved by, say, tweaking with the format. Allocate a Champions League place for the winner, play the semi-finals at neutral grounds and never Wembley, have the final at 3.00 pm on a Saturday and play all the games on a Saturday. Never going to happen. And even if it does, the FA Cup is too far gone.
I used to love the FA Cup and the final itself was a must watch. No more. I watched last year’s embarrassing mismatch between Manchester City and Watford in a pub in Liskeard and enjoyed the pub far more than I enjoyed the game. When the gap between the top few clubs is as wide as it is these days, the unexpected shock is all but impossible to imagine.
TV will get good audiences because it’s on terrestrial telly and far more folk will watch today’s games than even the most glamorous Premier League game because it’s free. But you can’t help thinking that the top teams will be fielding the stiffs or even the youth team because they have bigger fish to fry.
The only bit of the FA Cup I really like now is the Third Round draw. I can’t stop loving it. But once it’s out of the way, I rarely bother to watch the games.
Football: you’ve killed the FA Cup. All you wanted was money and then once you got the money you wanted even more. It will all collapse one day. Then what are you going to do?
