Cup collapse is killing the little clubs
LET'S GET RADICAL
AMID all the VAR nonsense it was lost this week just how much the “magic of the FA Cup” is slowly dying.
The oldest cup competition in the world causes nowhere near the buzz it once did, dwarfed by the twin monsters of Premier League and Champions League.
Yes, the weather has been terrible. But look at the crowds at Swansea and Tottenham for the replays which decided who made it into the last eight.
At the Liberty Stadium on Tuesday just 8,198 turned out to see Swansea beat Sheffield Wednesday 2-0.
Twenty-four hours later and Wembley was less than a third full, with 24,627 there to see the VAR storm as Spurs beat Rochdale 6-1 to set up a quarter-final meeting with the Swans. And 5,000 of those were supporters of League One’s bottom club!
Swansea’s lowest Premier League attendance is 20,024 against Hull in 2016.
Tottenham attracted 83,782 when Real Madrid were in town in the Champions League last November. And they set a Premier League record of 83,222 for the visit of Arsenal in February.
Put simply, the FA Cup just ain’t that magic any more.
Something that was not highlighted greatly this week was how the proposals to introduce a winter break from the 2019-20 season will hit lower-league clubs and their chances of a major payday.
Difference
The plan is to scrap fifth-round replays. So if it had already been introduced, Rochdale would not have had their trip to Wembley and a nice payday, which could cushion their likely relegation into League Two.
The fear, of course, is that top-flight clubs will then push to scrap all replays.
Paul Tisdale, boss of League Two side Exeter, said: “It really is once every 10 years your club has that (chance of such a replay) and it makes a difference.
“We played Liverpool in 2016 in a replay and made enough money in that tie to pay for artificial turf facilities for our academy.
“It allowed us to have the biggest improvement to our facilities in 10 years thanks to one game, so it would be really unfortunate if we lost replays completely.”
Back to the missing magic of the FA Cup and how to give it a boost. The answer is to follow the Europa League and hand the winners a place in the Champions League, or at least the final qualifier.
It would have to come at the expense of the fourthplaced club in the Premier League, which is unlikely to go down well with their chief executive Richard Scudamore, of course.
If not, how about an end-of-season playoff between the winners of the cup and the fourth-placed side?
The Championship decider at Wembley is regularly one of the games of the season. Imagine what a showdown for the final spot in the Champions League could be like.