WEEKEND WHEN FAIRYTALES DEFY DOOM-MONGERS
EVERY year it feels like we go into one of the best weekends of the football calendar thinking it’s not as good as it used to be.
The days when the FA Cup third round used to bring shocks galore as lower league teams and non-league minnows knocked out the big guns.
Ronnie Radford’s heroics for Hereford against Newcastle in 1972 (below), Wrexham celebrating (above) after dumping Arsenal out in 1992 and non-league Sutton upsetting Coventry 19 months onths after the Sky Blues won it at Wembley.
Great FA Cup memories which, we keep being told, are a thing of the past st because of the everwidening gap between the Premier League and the rest.
Except, if you look at last year’s FA Cup, it brought about a fair share of shocks and fairytales which is why the world’s oldest cup competition remains special.
Plymouth holding Liverpool, Millwall’s giantkilling cup run, another Sutton adventure and Lincoln’s epic campaign.
Last season, resting players became quite the thing for some clubs as they prioritised Premier League survival over winning silverware. But with all the bigger teams falling by the wayside, why wouldn’t a Bournemouth, Watford or Burnley really want to win the FA Cup?
Bournemouth resting players at Millwall saw them go out, their Premier League form fell off a cliff and you wonder whether the supporters really think Eddie Howe got his priorities right.
Winning the FA Cup has been Arsene Wenger’s salvation as Arsenal manager, a cup record-breaker who does rest players but picks a team that has, down the years years, been good enf enough to win it for him seven t times.
On Sunday t the Gunners g go to No Nottingham Forest Forest, one of those classic FA Cup thirdround meetings when the Championship side – no matter that they have just sacked boss Mark Warburton – fancies their chances of an upset.
It’s generally about the giant killer being at home, the big guns not being well prepared and then you get an upset.
Fleetwood is a great story with Leicester going there, the club where Jamie Vardy’s fairytale began. The parallel will make it special.
So, don’t be fooled. The FA Cup has not lost its magic even if the modern game sometimes does its best to ruin it.