FA are going to trash the FA Cup

It must be one of the great cup competitions in world football and should treated with a lot more respect than it is getting.
Dump that silly Carabooooooooooooo Cup.

The FA.....pandering to the Premier League

Don’t really care, it’s all about the EPL for me.

The second line justifies the first, and is the opinion of most Football fans, especially those outside of the UK.

I for one, love the FA cup - solely because of its randomness and the fact that you see clubs from different divisions playing each other all the time. And with that comes the romance and the giant killing.

But the fact is that the bread and butter of the Football world nowadays is the leagues, and the EPL is the most successful of those, and by a long way.

Put it this way, if the league was to stop tomorrow, and just the FA Cup were left, would English club football be as popular as it now, and would it stand up to UEFA football, Germany, Italy, Spain - even France or the Netherlands and their domestic leagues ?
It would sink like a stone and resemble Welsh club football, or worse, Scotland.

Yeah, I miss the shitty FA Cup songs.  Guess it is because the revenue they generate is tiny.







This one was a bit before my time, but I guess some songs are timeless:

Don't see how anyone can object to ditching replays - but it should be for every round including qualifying. Replaying the tie is absolute insanity, not to mention potential scheduling headache. I guess you could make an argument that playing ties on Wednesdays devalues it somehow, but you'll live.

North - just because every other sport does it, doesn’t mean the FA Cup should too. That’s a shit reason to do anything really. Clubs get 90 minutes plus stoppages and now extra time to produce a winning advantage. After that, a replay is just more extra time but played on a different day. Many football fans dislike penalty shoot outs as a method of separating teams, and aside from the drama, I feel the same. I couldn’t imagine a home run derby deciding a baseball game or a a free throw contest deciding a basketball game.

the other issue Father Jack is referring to (well at least I think he is) is lower division clubs hosting higher division clubs, especially top flight clubs. It’s a huge windfall for the smaller club. At the moment, the draw is completely random as the assigning of home and away teams. With a replay, it’s held at the away teams home ground. If a small club manages a draw away in the original rubber, they deserve the financial windfall and the home ground advantage in the replay. Penalties takes all this out of the equation.....

I'm on the fence on this one.

I mean there has been some great replays like the 4-4 between Everton & Liverpool where Kenny Dalglish famously resigned after the game, and the 2-1 United-Arsenal game in 99, where Bergkamp missed that last minute penalty, then Giggs dribbled it around the entire Arsenal defence to score down the other end. We would have been robbed of some great games down the years had there been no replays.

BUT...

There is something unsatisfactory about a game finishing and going to a replay. Bit like the first leg of CL games, but I suppose there is a bit more tension in the FA Cup than a first leg game.

But this thing about it helping small teams. It doesn't. Other than a short term injection of cash. How many times has a small club got a draw against a PL team, then won the replay? Never happens, the small clubs always get murdered in the replay. As the saying goes, you only get one shot at the big boys.

Leyton Orient played Arsenal about 5 or 6 years ago in the 5th round, drew 1-1. Now if you are asking me, would I rather Orient take our chances with a penalty shoot-out there and then, or take the replay at The Emirates in front of 60,000? I'll take the shoot-out every fucking time. Happily take a coin flip coz I wanna knock the fucking gooners out the FA Cup and get into the quarter finals!!

For the record we lost the replay 5-0. And look where Orient are now, so it did us a fat lot of good!

Think I'm leaning towards 'get rid' now.




PS And I'm sure someone will come up with an example of a small club (below the Championship) winning the replay, but it is such a rarity compared to the amount of times the small club could have taken the shoot-out and gone through.

The concept of doing a "replay" after tying the game is utterly antique. I'm glad that's changing.