The Magic of the Cup

There is a paradox at the heart of the FA Cup. Or rather, there is a paradox at the heart of punditry and narratives concerning the FA Cup, and it all came to a head this weekend as the paradox became wholly obvious.

One thing that makes the FA Cup special, in fact arguably the thing that makes the FA Cup special is giant killing. Smaller clubs travelling to or hosting Premier League or Championship clubs and knocking them out in a blaze of glory. Over the last couple of years, and this year more than most for a while, we have seen an absolute slew of giant killings, which leads to the well-worn cliché but nevertheless brilliant narrative device: “the magic of the cup”. 

So that’s the first horn of the dilemma: the magic of the cup. The second is the current narrative amongst pundits that “big clubs don’t take the FA Cup seriously”. Liverpool, Spurs, Southampton, Newcastle, Brighton and Leeds all made nine changes or more and all of them except Spurs were knocked out. Watford made seven changes and were knocked out by Millwall, Hull six as they were dispatched by Fulham. 

So here we have the paradox. Is the magic of the FA Cup being ruined by teams not sending out their best eleven players, whilst at the same time, the magic of the FA Cup is being sustained by giant killing? And yet, one would argue that this is problematic, and the cupsets this weekend offer a lot of evidence in favour of that. 

Liverpool made nine changes and sent out a reserve team to lose to a Wolves side that itself had made seven changes. Spurs made the same amount as they were run ragged by League Two Wycombe but somehow made it through. Brighton made ten changes and Leeds made nine as they were both knocked out by non-league opposition, whilst Newcastle also made nine as League One Oxford knocked them out. 

So I have a number of complaints with this attitude of: “Premier League teams shouldn’t rest players in the FA Cup” whilst on the same time, screaming: “it’s the magic of the cup” when lower league opposition knock out top opposition. First of all, as should be abundantly obvious by now, I don’t believe you can have one without the other. Yes, it’s entirely possible that some smaller teams knock out larger teams who take the competition seriously, but nothing of the magnitude or volume that have occurred this weekend and the last FA Cup weekend. No offence to Sutton or Lincoln, who have done extraordinarily well to reach the 5th Round of the bleeding FA Cup, but neither of those teams make it through if Leeds or Brighton decide to go full throttle and win those games. 

And this can be added to some of the biggest giant killings of the last decade or so. Last season, we saw Swansea knocked out by Oxford 3-2, and on that day Swansea sent out at best a reserve side. The previous year we saw Chelsea knocked out 4-2 by Bradford and Man City 2-0 by Boro on the same day, and neither side sent close to their best starting 11s out that day. Even Man United’s 1-0 defeat to Leeds in 2010 saw United missing Van Der Sar, Rafael, Vidic, Ferdinand, Evra, Carrick, Valencia, Scholes, Giggs and Nani amongst others. 

And this is not to diminish the impact of those shocks by the way, nor is it giving an excuse to the Premier League sides who were bundled out this weekend. My point is merely that it’s churlish on the one hand to demand Premier League teams to go for the throat in the FA Cup against smaller sides, and yet if they did (and on the few years where they have), the very same pundits will moan that there’s a lack of magic in the cup when all the big clubs steamroller the smaller ones. 

I imagine at this point that there would be a good counter-argument which is that: these cup shocks would still happen, and they would be greater when they did. Which to an extent I very much agree with, except that they would happen significantly less often, and would rarely if even happen to the big clubs. As for the idea that it would mean even more: try telling Sutton and Lincoln that their cup shocks would have been against a full strength team. 

Another point that Alan Shearer makes is that by playing a weakened team, managers and clubs are essentially “cheating” fans out of a cup run, and that fans want to see trophies. On this front I think that he is categorically wrong for a multitude of reasons. Let’s look at the top clubs, and below that, the lower level EPL teams or even, for the sake of argument, upper echelon Championship clubs. 

So to start with, the idea that big clubs are cheating their fans. Well of the top six, the so-called big clubs, only one, Liverpool was knocked out this weekend, although all six sent out weakened teams, with Chelsea, Man United and Arsenal all winning by 4 goals or more despite making nine or more changes. And even then, Liverpool should have won the game, and if Shearer thinks that the team that Liverpool sent out wasn’t good enough to win that game on their day, then he’s wrong. 

Moreover, whilst I’m sure you could find a lot of Liverpool fans that feel as though they should have taken the competition more seriously, even more will make the point that if the FA wanted teams to take the competition seriously, they wouldn’t have scheduled a crunch match against Chelsea for three days afterwards. You don’t get Champions League football for winning the FA Cup, so the league remains LFC’s top priority. 

But if you asked a range of mid-table Premier League clubs why they don’t take the FA Cup more seriously, they could be forgiven for asking: what’s the point? For all the talk about how the big clubs “don’t take it seriously” the FA Cup has been won by Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea or Man United 18 of the last 21 seasons, with the four clubs sharing the trophy between them 12 seasons in a row between Everton’s win in 1995 and Portsmouth’s win in 2008. The only teams to break this monopoly are Manchester City in 2011, the year before they won the title, Pompey in 08, who finished 8th in the Premier League that season, and Wigan who shocked everyone by winning in 2013. So that’s one team in the last 21 years who has won the FA Cup from outside the top eight, only two from outside the monopoly of the big clubs. And going down another level, no team has won the Premier League from outside the top flight since West Ham in 1980, 37 years ago. 

And this ties back into the point about the top clubs. For all the talk of how they “don’t take it seriously”, Man United won it last year, and Arsenal the two years previously, Chelsea four years out of six between 2007 and 2012. 2008 is the only year in over 25 years that we didn’t see one of the “big clubs” in the final. 

So whilst on an individual case by case basis it is possible to say that clubs don’t take the FA Cup seriously enough, that evidence is overwhelmed by a history of top Premier League clubs resting players in the early rounds and then using bigger name players later on and winning the trophy. This in turn undermines the efforts of mid-table Premier League clubs, who even if they do take the FA Cup seriously, have little chance of winning it, as sooner or later they’ll run into a big club and get knocked out. 

And more importantly, we don’t want to see big clubs take the early rounds seriously. One of the biggest reasons that we love the FA Cup is its upsets, the illusion that the big clubs get cocky and will get knocked out by a minnow, the idea that anyone can win, even if that illusion isn’t based in reality. And cupsets are heavily reliant on big teams resting players. They’ve done so for years and years, and far from taking away from the magic of the cup, has enhanced it. 

In conclusion, there is a version of the FA Cup where the big teams take it seriously, and whilst it might improve the quality of the later rounds, it certainly would dilute, if not completely remove that indescribable essence that we all watch for: the magic of the cup.