I’ve looked at this from both sides now, from up and down, and still somehow – no,  I still can’t see it.

It isn’t just the football club with it’s lackadaisical attitude to the FA Cup, it’s the fans as well. The ones who think the league is more important than the Cup. They might as well just take off with the team on some money spinning Asia/Australasia/America tour on the FA Cup weekends. They might enjoy themselves more doing that, seeing as The FA Cup just isn’t relevant to them anymore. After all, it was only Don Revie who said that winning the FA Cup was the best day of his life.

It is just too easy to forget the days of the whole country grinding to a halt on Cup Final day and everyone crowding around the one telly in the street to see the game. The days when you only got 3 live games on the telly a year, the FA Cup Final, England v Scotland and occassionally the European Cup Final if an English team was in it.

Following on from my letter to the Club, here is the letter to the fans (in the loosest possible terms of my understanding of the word “fans”).

Dear Football fan

The time is drawing near for you to plan your football watching season in 2019.

If you are one of those who think the league is far more important that the FA Cup, can I please request that you book your holidays for the Cup weekends, thereby sparing the rest of us from your negative defeatist attitudes. As the FA Cup weekends are generally in winter, warmer climes are appropriate and you will reduce the demand on school holiday time for the rest of us.

In the extremely unlikely event of the Club taking the competition seriously and progressing into the later stages of the FA Cup, please can you spare us from the whingeing about not being able to get a ticket to that “glory tie”.  If your mantra is “The Cup doesn’t really matter”, this smacks of total, utter, complete hypocrisy and someone needs to slap you in the face with a cold wet fish. I wonder how many of you were clamouring for one of the 8000+ £48 tickets for Old Trafford a few seasons ago? More importantly, how many of you would admit to it?

I would also like to point out that joining in with the “January 3rd, remember the date” is also seen as hypocrisy of the highest order, please desist with immediate effect.

Losing any game is not to be taken lightly. Losing to lower league opposition, is particularly damaging to team spirit and the knock on effect of a defeat by minnows will invariably affect the performance in the subsequent games. As a fan, your objectives should always be to celebrate a win.

Yours truly

A football fan from days gone by

ps

Shame on you for forgetting your history. Shame on you for forgetting the great Revie era. Shame on you for forgetting Side before Self. Shame on you for forgetting that it is all about for playing for the team and the pride of the shirt. Every game matters, week in, week out. That is just how it is.