Surplus To Requirements

The Football Association's Strategic Plan, covering 2011-15, states that one of the FA's goals is to  "protect and build The FA Cup’s reputation as the greatest domestic cup competition in the world," yet the game's governing body are currently debating whether to implement changes to the competition that do quite the opposite. The FA are negotiating with a tiny proportion of the FA Cup's entrants to make alterations that would radically change the nature of the competition and damage its character and iconic nature. It may be clichéd, but just as the giantkilling is such a huge attraction of the FA Cup, so is earning a replay against all odds. Replacing multiple replays with penalties if necessary in the second game made sense, even for traditionalists, removing replays altogether is a step too far. I cannot see how turning the FA Cup into a midweek competition, when Champions League and Europa League dates already congest those days during the latter half of the season for Premier League sides, helps.

Multiple replays (it took six games to separate Oxford City and Alvechurch in 1971) are a thing of the past. Picture: Oxford Mail.

This season 736 teams entered the FA Cup, the views of 716 of those are being put to one side while the FA debate with the twenty Premier League sides how they can make the FA Cup less of a burden for them. While the current format is likely to remain in place until the TV deal with the BBC expires in 2019, thereafter there is a very real prospect that the competition may see replays abolished and ties played in midweek rather than at weekends. The reasoning behind the change is to alleviate the fixture congestion that is perceived as a barrier to English teams succeeding in European competitions and detrimental to the success of the national team. That seems a somewhat disingenuous point of view. You cannot put England's lack of success at World Cup and Euro Finals tournaments down to West Bromwich Albion having to go to Peterborough United in an FA Cup Fourth Round Replay this season and quite how Manchester United's failure to qualify for the knock out stages of the Champions League can be laid at the door of a competition that they didn't enter until after their elimination from the bloated successor to the European Cup is beyond me.

The FA's Strategic Plan states that they will "protect and build the FA Cup's reputation."

Of England's Champions League entrants last season, only two required FA Cup replays and one of those sides, Liverpool, had already failed to qualify for the Champions League knock-out stage by the time they needed an extra game to get past Bolton Wanderers. Meanwhile in Spain and Italy the domestic cup competitions are played over two legs in every round. Barcelona won the Champions League despite playing 60 games in all competitions (Lionel Messi played in 56 of them) while Chelsea played 54 games in all competitions  (none of which were FA Cup replays) and not one player started more than 38 of those games.  Barcelona won La Liga, the Champions League and their domestic cup competition, the Copa del Rey in which they played nine games, one more than is necessary for a Premier League team to play to win the FA Cup. It is difficult to ascribe Chelsea's failure to win the Champions League to the two FA Cup ties they played last season (neither of which were replays).

If we are looking for reasons for England's failure then perhaps the surfeit of overseas players in the Premier League might be a better place to start. If we consider English teams failing in Europe then perhaps a more important factor might be the strength of their opponents, but never forget that English teams have won the European Cup/Champions League on twelve occasions, second only to Spanish sides, and eight English teams have taken part in the last eleven finals. Not, I would argue, a poor record and certainly one which would unlikely to be improved by abolishing FA Cup replays. Premier League teams routinely field teams in the FA Cup made up of second string and youth team players anyway (a policy that rather undermines their assertion that the FA Cup is detrimental to English teams progress in Europe), but it remains an iconic competition that is definitely now more highly regarded by clubs below the Championship than it is by the top forty four clubs in English football.

Romford play St Margaretsbury in last season's FA Cup, a competition that remains hugely important to non-League teams. 

Returning to the FA's Strategic Plan, the organisation set great store in their being able to deliver their goals by "Listening to football fans." Not, presumably on the occasion of the FA Cup tie between Exeter City and Liverpool, switched to a Friday night for television and resulting in Liverpool supporters finding that the last train home departed Exeter before kick-off. The complaints of the travelling Liverpool fans was brushed aside by broadcasters on the basis that it was  " no different to their visits to Swansea on a Monday night in the Premier League and a Wednesday trip to Southampton in the League Cup, both of which they have done in the last 12 months." So that's all right then, having been thoroughly inconvenienced twice, by the third time they ought to be used to it. Liverpool rewarded their travelling fans by fielding a woefully under strength side that required a replay to despatch their lower league opponents. Not that this would have made any difference to their Europa League aspirations as they fielded an equally weakened team in the replay.

There is no doubt that Premier League clubs are losing interest in the FA Cup, as Manchester City showed last weekend at Chelsea. Using the excuse of a midweek trip to Kiev in the Champions League,  they fielded a team containing six teenagers and five debutants. Winning the FA Cup used to be an end in itself, now it is not much more than a route into the rightly much maligned Europa League and while Arsenal picked up £3.3 million for winning the FA Cup last season, this was a pittance compared with the €36.38 million (£28.38 million) they accrued for reaching the last sixteen of the Champions League. Financially Premier League clubs do not need the FA Cup. Tinkering with the prize pot for the FA Cup would make no difference to the big clubs and would probably result in reduced prize money for the earlier rounds where clubs below the Football League really need the money.

The top clubs in Europe have been discussing changes to the format of the Champions League and Europa League, and while they deny it, rumour has it that they want to strengthen the stranglehold the tops clubs have by denying a place to even the champions of countries like Scotland and in effect creating a European League. A permanent place in the Champions League for clubs like Arsenal, Chelsea and the Manchester clubs might make even the Premier League a secondary consideration. A Champions League place for the FA Cup winners might be sufficient incentive for clubs to start taking the competition seriously, but if guaranteed or wild card places in the Champions League for the top clubs unable to qualify on merit become a reality (as has been mooted by Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu) then the interest Manchester City, Chelsea, Liverpool et al show in the FA Cup is likely to wane still further.

With the prospect of FA Cup replays being abolished and the competition possibly being shunted into midweek, with Premier League clubs taking less interest in the competition and the views of supporters being ignored, can the day be far off when the oldest knock out competition in football is deemed surplus to requirements?