I was talking to @anon78624367 about his beloved Manchester City losing the 2013 FA Cup Final to Wigan Athletic and Roberto Mancini getting fired two days later. What are you withering on about?
Robbie doing a very competent job with the draw here.
Klopp has lads foaming at the mouth here. If Liverpool win the League they’ll be reduced to questioning why lads watch football at all.
It’s fascinating to watch really.
He still looks like he’s fit enough to play
HIs own cult members who are frantically chasing their tails.
Some weirdos on here. Watching the FA cup in the first place and then arguing about the lack of importance of said FA cup
1 Like
That Masterson lad didn’t even make the squad tongiht, mate.
1 Like
That’s great mate.
Early January and season over already.
Apology accepted.
Klopp is claiming an illness struck Melwood. You’d have to take his word for it.
It’s that time of year
8 Likes
What a day
1 Like
The decline of the FA Cup, like fascism, came about as traditional norms were chipped away at bit by bit.
The high point of the FA Cup’s history was pre-1991, and particularly the 1986-1990 period, when it probably never mattered more than at any stage in its history, given that English teams were banned from Europe.
The 1990 semi-final day when both ties were televised live was arguably the highest single point in the competition’s history.
It mattered for most of the rest of the 1990s, but there are several key points during thaat decade which all damaged its credibility and ultimately destroyed the competition as we knew it.
They are as follows:
i) The advent of a penalty competition for the 1990 fiinal replay. It didn’t need to be used, but that night, the competition took its first step on an inexorable slippery slope.
ii) The re-introduction of English teams into Europe in 1990. There was nothing inherently obvious as to why this should prove to be a factor in the FA Cup’s demise given that English teams had played in Europe for nearly 30 years pre-1985, but the re-introduction of English teams was the first step towards the Champions League era of European competitions.
iii) The first Wembley semi-final in 1991, which destroyed the sanctity of the venue for finals.
iv) The advent of penalty competitions for the 1992 competition. Gone was the possibility of the sometimes interminable yet frequently brilliant sagas like Arsenal v Leeds, Nottingham Forest v Crystal Palace and Liverpool v Everton which had graced the 1991 competition.
v) The formation of the FA Premier League in 1992.
vi) Wembley becoming a regular semi-final venue from 1993. Proper neutral venues like Elland Road and Villa Park were reinstated for 1995, but a line had been crossed and could not be uncrossed.
vii) The introduction of the second placed team in the league being admitted to the Champions League for the 1996/97 league season.
viii) BBC losing the rights to ITV for the 1998 competition.
ix) The abolition of the European Cup Winners Cup in 1999.
x) The admission of the third placed team in the league into the Champions League in 1999.
xi) The abolition of semi-final and final replays post-1999.
xii) The Manchester United debacle for the 1999/2000 competition.
xiii) In the same season, the Third Round was played before Christmas, which was an equally big factor in the downgrading of the competition.
xiv) The demolition of Wenbley and the move to Cardiff.
xv) The admission of the fourth placed team in the league into the Champions League in the 2001/02 season.
The last FA Cup game which genuinely felt like it mattered was the 1999 semi-final replay.
Since that, it has never felt like it really mattered and there has been an increasingly desperate air of fakery about the media attempts to tell the public that the competition matters.
If there’s one thing that irks me, it’s people trying to claim, against all evidence, that a sporting competition which really did matter in the late 80s and early 90s has lost none of its importance and charm, and that it still taken every bit as seriously now as it was then.
The “magic of the Cup” schtick is the sporting equivalent of crackpot Brexiteers retreating to a make believe fantasy world of an old Britain that no longer exists.
It’s just sad, pathetic trolling.
Thankfully we have great, venerable British sporting competitions which continue to endure in all their glory and finery in a way the FA Cup has not.
Wimbledon. The Grand National. The World Snooker Championship at The Crucible Theatre. Badminton Horse Trials. And of course, the World Professional Darts Championship at the Home of Darts, Lakeside.
2 Likes
None of those competitions are domestic competitions so aren’t comparable.