Isn’t it time the Football Association started getting a little bit, you know, rigorous about its most historic and exciting competition, the FA Cup? By rigorous I mean clobbering, good and proper, Premier League sides who treat the tournament as an unpleasant encumbrance on their patent desperation to either stay in the top division or challenge for a place in Europe.
Last week an estimated £800m of footballing talent was left on the bench, or at home, as the top division’s forgotten players traipsed out balefully for the third round of the cup. The biggest culprits were Eddie Howe’s Bournemouth side, who were duly thrashed 3-0 by Millwall, a mid-table team two divisions below them. The scoreline was not an inaccurate reflection of the match — indeed it could have been more. Howe changed the entire team who had last played a league game, and that was his reward. Everybody likes and respects Howe and probably quite a lot of neutrals are rooting for Bournemouth this time around, as they did last season. But last Saturday he cheated. As one Bournemouth fan put it on his fans’ forum, the Millwall game was “a shameful day for Bournemouth and the FA Cup” and, as another Cherries supporter put it, “disrespected the FA Cup, the opposition and the fans who travelled”. Yes, exactly right.
But it is also cheating. Not just the fans of both clubs who bought tickets for the tie, but also the teams around Bournemouth in the Premier League, such as Stoke City, who competed fairly with a strong line-up. Yes, Millwall played with enormous panache, resilience and organisation. But once the euphoria had died down, the victory left a slightly sour taste in the mouth. It was reported that the Bournemouth side who stepped out at The New Den had cost £40m (compared to the home side’s few hundred thou). In which case, Howe has bought very badly indeed. He has bought players who would struggle in League Two – it was probably Millwall’s easiest win of the season.
Bournemouth were far from the only culprits. That other nice guy, Jurgen Klopp, did almost the same with his Liverpool side who scraped a home draw against League Two’s Plymouth Argyle. Tottenham took a similar approach in securing their narrow win over Aston Villa. And aside from the cheating, you wonder what goes through the minds of the managers.
Bournemouth were ninth in the top division, relatively secure. Is the chance to win some prestigious silverware not worth the risk? Or do the financial implications of staying in the top division now blind all managers to every other avenue for glory?
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We have become accustomed, recently, to teams struggling against relegation, or fighting for the title, putting out weakened sides both in the Capital One Cup and more recently the FA Cup. Now even mid-table teams cannot be bothered with what was once a hugely prestigious trophy and a highlight of the season. And yet they will face no censure.
It is the iniquity that galls, the different approach taken by the authorities to the gilded elite and the rest of the clubs. Back in November, 10 League One and Two clubs were fined considerable amounts of money for fielding under-strength sides in the ludicrous Checkatrade Trophy. This competition has never been hugely loved by the lower divisions, and now it is loathed. A decision was made to allow into it the youth teams from clubs in the top leagues — a development considered egregious and deeply insulting by fans of the lowlier clubs. And it was done to benefit the bigger clubs, to give their young starlets a runout against seasoned pros.
Luton Town and Portsmouth copped the biggest fines, but the financial might of Fleetwood Town and Peterborough also had to fork out. And so, by a magnificent stroke of irony, did Millwall. Hell, at least we won our game against West Brom’s under-eights, or whatever. Millwall had changed only five or six players.
There are no excuses for the Premier League cheats. They will argue that the weight of fixtures compromises their attempts to stay in the division or challenge for honours. But Bournemouth will play, this season, a total of 40 games, 38 in the league and one each for the FA Cup and what we used to call the League Cup. The likes of Millwall, Portsmouth, Luton and Fleetwood will play a minimum of 50 and in each case probably three or four more if you include the playoffs. And they will do so with much, much smaller squads than those of Premier League teams. Indeed, that £40m sum touted as the total net value of Bournemouth’s inept reserves would probably account for the combined value of every side in the bottom two divisions. And yet we have our aspirations, too.
This is chronically unfair and demeans the FA Cup. I suppose one could fine the likes of Bornmuff for cheating, but the amounts of money that pertain in the Premier League mean that they would have to be pitched at a ludicrous level to have any effect. Better would be a points deduction — because that’s where it hurts. That would concentrate Eddie Howe’s mind a little. Or force him to play the same bunch of overpaid, dilatory imbeciles in the next Premier League fixture. Either way, do something. Or the FA Cup will dissolve before our eyes.