Cup can wrestle back the limelight
Admittedly, we were probably all spoilt by last year’s last-day drama, when Manchester City won it in heart-stoppage time at the Etihad leaving Manchester United players with their jaws on the turf up at the Stadium of Light.
That sensational conclusion is, of course, the main reason the 2011-12 season was voted the greatest in Premier League history, but there were also other days and other games which, over the course of 10 months, helped script a memorable tale of the unexpected — think City hitting United for six or United putting eight past a bewildered Arsenal, for starters.
But this year? When Sergio Aguero scored a superb winner against United last week, it felt merely like a consolation prize, an eerily similar but essentially meaningless reprise of his goal for the ages against QPR last May. And once all that knee-jerk stuff about bragging rights had died down, Roberto Mancini was still left with the gloomy realisation that it is now his turn to hope that United will do what Alex Ferguson had hoped City would do in last season’s run-in — a Devon Loch.
As it turned out, City managed to do something even more extraordinary — falling to their knees in the final furlong but somehow getting back up again just in time to get their noses over the line first. That a practiced winner like Fergie could allow his charges to make life similarly difficult for themselves this time around is almost unthinkable.
So, barring the improbable, what’s left to command our attention for what remains of the current campaign? In north and west London, where Spurs, Arsenal and Chelsea have their own mini-league to play out, they’ll need little convincing that a ‘top four finish’ is glory enough, though the evidence of this season already suggests that, rather than fighting for a Champions League place, what they are really engaged in is a battle for the Europa League Via The Scenic Route.
All of which leaves us with the race to the bottom as the main source of interest, hardly a ringing endorsement of ‘the greatest league in the world’. With the howls of the doomed always more affecting than the tears of the runners-up, it’s true that there’s nothing quite like a relegation dog-fight to ratchet up the emotional temperature, but even here there’s a slightly jaded familiarity about this year’s dramatis personae — Oodini ’Arry, plucky Reading and the Flat Cats among the usual suspects.
And not forgetting Wigan, of course, without whom no end of season survival scrap or putative great escape would be complete. But at least the Latics — and the rest of us — get another kind of escape from the routine today, as the first of the weekend’s FA Cup semi-finals takes centre stage.
Correction: the end of that last sentence should, of course, have read: “as the first of the weekend’s FA Cup semi-finals takes its place on a crowded stage alongside five Premier League games and a full schedule of npower Championship, League One, League Two and Blue Square Bet Premier League fixtures.”
It was hardly their intention, but sponsors William Hill could hardly have been more on the money with their ‘can you spot the FA Cup?’ visual teasers in ITV’s coverage of the competition this season.
Look, I know I’m an increasingly decrepit old greybeard and, if I didn’t, the fact was brought painfully home to me only the other day when I was buying a copy of Mojo and, having scanned the Eric Clapton cover, the girl behind the counter cheerfully announced: “Oh, I must buy this for my father.”
So, in common with the rest of my endangered species, I suppose it’s pointless to still be railing against the marginalisation of the once glorious FA Cup, evident not only in its having to jostle for position in the weekend’s wall to wall schedule but also in the fact that these days you can get to Wem-ber-lee — and your knees can even go all trem-ber-lee — without the bother of having to actually reach the final at all.
Which is one reason, presumably, why Wigan have been unable to shift 10,000 of the tickets they were allocated for today’s game against Millwall. Yet, the fixture’s very lack of glamour — even anti-glamour in the case of the Lions — gives it a certain gritty appeal, especially since it allows for the possibility of a struggling Championship side overturning the odds to set up a ‘Crazy Gang v Culture Club’ finale to rival Wimbledon versus Liverpool way back when.
Because waiting to make their entrance from the wings tomorrow are Chelsea and Manchester City, two of the erstwhile powers in the land who suddenly find that, domestically at least, the FA Cup is their last chance to redeem a season both would sooner forget. And while no one in their right mind expects either Roberto Mancini or Rafael Benitez to immeasurably strengthen their bargaining positions on the basis of a cup triumph, tomorrow’s semi-final still rates as a proper clash of heavyweights with, thankfully, something more significant than bragging rights at stake. And as the Premier League wends its weary way to a foregone conclusion, we should be thankful to the FA Cup for that at least.
