FA Cup

What does the FA cup mean to teams today?

Too many teams, rotate/rest their better players on order of league commitments meaning more to them. This is a huge shame, what happened to the magic of the cup?

The main problem is the money available from getting promoted or staying up. Most teams will sacrifice a cup run to complete their league objective. This is of course understandable but nothing gets the fans going like a good cup run or toppling the favorite. For example, Norwich went to the Hawthorns in the last round and win with a full strength team and then go rest players against Leicester and lose. Ask any Norwich fan and they will tell you they wanted to win the cup.

The trophy that teams should go all out to win.

You can just tell from the excitement it has brought to everyone around our club, Liverpool. We have not won a trophy for coming up 6 years and Kenny knew how much the club needed one so played a strong team throughout the Carling cup including at Exeter away.

More managers should follow the example Kenny has set by making progress in a cup you get the fans onside and can paper over the cracks if the league form is dodgy (as in our case).

I watched the Arsenal game yesterday in which they were very poor. It was practically the same team from the week before which beat Sunderland 2-1 (excluding a cameo from Thierry Henry). You can't blame Arsene Wenger for weakening his side but did the players want to be there?

There was nowhere near the same intensity as what you would expect from an Arsenal side. Too many players ran scared for me and didn't want to fight to get the the quarter finals. In the Premier league game the week before they were all up for it and wanted the 3 points.  What's the difference?

Arsene looks on as Arsenal seems destined to go 7 years without a trophy.

It's currently half time at a proper cup tie between Spurs and Stevenage, both teams want to win. Stevenage effort and aggression is matching Spurs' quality. The fans are really behind the home team and are getting their player's up for it.

Spurs' now know their in a battle, this is what the FA cup should be about. Every game should be tough in the FA cup, no matter who you are.

A good example of this was last year at Old Trafford when Crawley totally outplayed them for 90 minutes and were very unlucky to come out without even a replay. That is what the FA cup is all about, not teams resting their better players and taking the defeat cause they're league form is more important.

It's a shame that the coverage of the FA cup is awful on both channels, ESPN and ITV. The amount of adverts is appalling. Using the FA cup's brand to earn extra money during the ad's break is a massive NO.

The BBC used to be excellent at their punditry and their commentary, its's a great shame their can't afford to pay for the rights. Between the adverts we get, Roy Keane's rants and Robbie Savage's ponytail. It's a great achievement that we all manage to stay awake at half time.

Roy Keane boring us all to death with his rant about gloves.

I hope after writing all this Liverpool don't give us another Reading or Northampton performance and continue to do our cup run's proud.

YNWA