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Stop losing your sh*t about the FA Cup
Is it just me or do people in mainstream media completely lose their heads with the FA Cup?
Unlike the league, there’s absolutely no way any team should lose to another team lower than them in the same league, or league/s below. The element of chance is completely removed. Anything less than a win and the manager has ‘chucked it’ or ‘doesn’t care about the cup’. After the third round, there were prominent BBC people slagging off Everton, West Brom and Bournemouth for treating the Cup with disrespect. The former two played full-strength teams but lost. It’s football, it happens. Sometimes, players just play rubbish. Spurs last year lost to Palace at home and Pochettino was criticised. Look at the team line-ups though and the side was amply good enough to beat Palace, who went on to be the worst form team in the country that year.
If a player is left out, journalists/commentators/pundits ignore all context and believe they don’t need to know or understand why the player is left out. They automatically revert back to ‘manager doesn’t care about the competition’. The player could be injured, tired, carrying a knock from previous match. Doesn’t matter. Straight on the soap box. This is completely ignoring the fact that in all competitions, the manager tends to pick a team he thinks is good enough to win that particular match. Managers have very different views of their players than supporters do. Managers tend to follow fact rather than narrative for starters.
Players like Shearer mock managers for resting players, particularly against lower-league opposition, but then bemoan England’s poor show at tournaments because of tiredness. Shearer particularly annoyed me this weekend with this, despite the fact he retired from international football in his prime in order to curb tiredness, and has advised Rooney to do the same. So you can jog England on, but don’t you dare do it with the cup!
Clubs are pilloried for not living within their means yet people are surprised the likes of Watford don’t chase a £1.8m prize when it can cost them £100m if they end up going down. The FA have let money be pumped into the PL and have made no attempt to tart up the Cup. Offer CL for the winners or a significantly improved financial reward. We can sit here and say the game is about glory but fat load of good winning the FA Cup did for Wigan Athletic. They’re screwed now and in danger of slipping into League 1. Does the FA have the argument that teams are complacent in the Cup when they’ve been complacent with their own competition?
Like with a lot of punditry and sports media/churnalism these days, context is dead and narrative is king. This weekend should have been a triumph for lovers of the Cup and the magic it could bring, but they were too busy harping on about the past in a high-pitched voice.
Ross, THFC
