Crystal Palace have their own meme at the moment. They’re doing all they can to finish 12th and give their fans nothing to cheer about. To be fair, a subdued Selhurst Park in the week eventually sprang into life at their 4-1 dispatching of Aston Villa. There’s joy in the journey but since their play-off promotion in 2013, their consistency for midtable has been astonishing.
With at least three utterly incompetent teams below them, Palace’s chances of Premier League relegation are zero. So, Oliver Glasner, dare you put your eggs into the FA Cup basket and bring glory to SE25? I’d love to see a full-strength Crystal Palace give the cup a real go. And on paper at least, facing rivals Millwall on Saturday afternoon is an entertaining prospect.
We had thrills and spills in Round Four and I’ll be at Old Trafford on Sunday to see Manchester United face Fulham. United’s own soap opera adds an extra element, but no doubt we’ll see rotated sides and, looking at the fixtures, the attention of most teams will be elsewhere.
When you’re battling for survival or focusing on a final league flourish, how much can a manager care about a spot in the FA Cup quarter finals?
Plymouth Argyle have already knocked out the best team in the country and as Miron Muslić told them, they are in the club’s history books forever. The FA Cup fact file doesn’t have an asterisk to denote that Arne Slot played his second-string. And, if they were to upend Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City on Saturday, they would rightly be compared to Wimbledon’s Crazy Gang and join the pantheon of sides with amazing runs in the world’s oldest cup competition.
But Muslić was brought in to save Argyle from the the Championship drop. I think we’ve seen enough now to say he’ll do it. Even if he didn’t, Wigan Athletic fans will tell you that they’d take beating City in the cup over a couple more seasons of survival. But they’re referring to when they lifted the trophy at Wembley and were relegated in the same season, not when they knocked them out again as a Championship club a year later.
So, who else can dream of Wembley to save their season? How about another historic name, Preston North End? I was at a half-empty Deepdale for their penalty shoot-out victory over Wycombe. Their 2001 play-off final failure under David Moyes is a long-distant memory. This is their 10th season outside of the Championship play-offs since their return from the third tier in 2015. Their continued midtable mediocrity is made all the worse by Saturday’s derby-day opponents, Burnley, chasing another Premier League return. The heat of this rivalry means there’s only so much rotation Scott Parker can undertake but his squad is big enough to change their entire XI and make it into the next round.
Fulham and Millwall both have an outside chance of breaking into the top six in their respective division, so the jury is out on how much they’re up for the cup. And so, we invariably come to the holders. The one club desperately needing the cup to stave off their never-ending malaise, Manchester United.
Were it not for Bruno Fernandes and an Ipswich side so bad at defending that they’ve conceded 23 goals in their last 10 Premier League outings, this week’s omnibus episode would have been bleak. Altay Bayındır’s heroics against Arsenal in the last round justified Rúben Amorim’s goalkeeper rotation and if he is fit, he’d be strengthening the XI after yet more comedy ‘keeping from André Onana on Wednesday.
It’s this week too that United have announced a post-season tour of Asia. You can’t deny that it’s a huge cash-cow for a club that are leaking money at faster rate that the water flowing through the Old Trafford roof on a rainy weekend. And although we can joke, there are the hundreds of workers who’ve taken pride in working for Manchester United, facing an uncertain future and my thoughts are with them.
But, and I know I’m ‘old man shouts at cloud’ here, from a footballing point of view, this is yet more mockery of the dispensing of cup replays to appease the top sides from having to play too many games. Now, nobody at Deepdale wanted a replay between Preston and Wycombe but that’s the nature of the cup, isn’t it? Or at least, it was.
Add to that, we’re adding changes to VAR and semi-automated offside at all grounds except Deepdale. It’s a compromised competition that has accepted that tweaking elements of the format, mid-season, can’t devalue it any further.
To put the boot on the other foot, there’s nothing to say that Premier League pros desperate to break into their league XIs can’t put on a star showing and light it up this weekend. We’ve already had some brilliant games and EFL players doing just that. Jamie Donley’s incredible effort for Leyton Orient that helped give them the lead over Manchester City was a magical moment. Tomoki Iwata’s every touch inside the opponent’s half is now greeted with ‘shoot!’ after his superb strike for Birmingham City in their defeat to Newcastle United. Both, remember, were against rotated sides.
The magic is still there and whoever makes those moments happen will provide us with the entertainment that we need, either way. And when we get to the Wembley semis, let alone the final, we’ll of course see the strongest sides on offer.
I’d be lying though, if I said my heart didn’t sink when looking at our fourth-round offerings. Are Bournemouth and Wolves fans willing for fork out to see their fringe players? How many empty seats will the TV directors be trying to frame out at the Etihad? How willing are Ipswich fans to make a Monday night trip to Nottingham to see how the players left from their League One days do at a side focussed on making the Champions League? I just hope there’s a manager out there willing enough to care and able to give it a go this weekend.
Just don’t show them Alan Pardew in his cup final suit, dancing in his technical area as his Palace side took the lead at Wembley in 2016. We know how that turned out.
(Cover image from IMAGO)
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