Posted on onlinegooner.com on January 26th 2009
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You may have missed it last May, I know I certainly did. The throngs of people lining the streets along the open top bus route from the stadium named after an airline all the way through Holloway Road to Islington Town Hall for the civic reception in celebration of our side’s great achievement. In fact it’s escaped my attention every year since 2005. I have my suspicion that it may have never even happened at all. Quite why it shouldn’t I don’t know. So what if we never won a trophy, would we have swapped it for Tottenham or Portsmouth’s achievements last season? This was a question Matthew Lorenzo had put to us on the 1992/93 season video while voicing over a league table showing Arsenal’s final position (10th) that season with the phrase ‘all of the above with exception of Manchester United would have happily swapped places with Arsenal on FA Cup Final day’. And Lorenzo was right, Norwich City would happily have swapped their highest ever finish that year for our double cup final appearances, as would Spurs despite this being one of the few times they actually finished above us. However last year, not so. Despite having absolutely nothing to show for it we were more contented than Spurs or Portsmouth, even p***ing ourselves over the thought of the former trying to lord their ‘achievement’ over us.
What has led to this celebration of mediocrity? Wasn’t scoring in a cup final every youngster’s dream, wasn’t Stanley Matthews (below) finally winning the FA Cup at 38 the icing on the cake of his great career? Wasn’t Cloughie’s failure to win it the greatest disappointment of his? Would either have seen finishing third/fourth or avoiding relegation as adequate compensation for missing out on the Cup? If it was good enough for Stanley Matthews, the Kaka of his generation, why isn’t it good enough for Dave Kitson of Reading? Last season he stated ‘We are not going to win the FA Cup and I do not care less about it, to be honest’. So much for the romance of the cup! In fact what is the value of a giant-killing in 2009? In 1992 Arsenal’s full strength team were humiliated 1-2 at Wrexham. If Cardiff manage it this season in the replay we will probably retort that we didn’t even bother playing a full first team so it couldn’t have been that important anyway, as we did when we lost to Burnley.
It doesn’t take the investigative wit of a Sherlock Holmes to work out why this has happened (in fact the investigative wit of Eamonn Holmes is sufficient in this instance). The twin forces of the Champions League and Premier League have overshadowed the romance of the big day out at ‘Wem-ber-leee’. As Gwen Guthrie states in her 1986 hit ‘Ain’t Nothing Going On But The Rent’ there is ‘no romance without finance’, and as Kitson explains ‘Our league status is not protected by winning the FA Cup - simple as that’. I’m sure Wenger would be the first to point out the same regarding the FA Cup in relation to our Champions League status. So there you go. We’ve got status to uphold and too many bills to pay to go chasing dreams. In the words of a 1984 Depeche Mode hit ‘it’s a lot like life’, however wasn’t football invented to get away from all that sh*t?
Recently an Australian colleague of mine had rightly pointed out his amazement at the Premiership’s global popularity when you consider how predictable it all is. The last time any of the big four failed to qualify for the Champions League was 2002/3, the last time all of the current big four failed to finish in the top four was 1962/63! The bottom is equally predictable, the last time all the newly promoted sides stayed up and all newly relegated sides stayed down was 1989/90. Fans of sides like Tottenham, Everton, Man City, Portsmouth, West Ham or Newcastle - once relegation is safely out of the way - may get to dream of a cup run as the Champions League is often too far out of reach.
This year we have exceptional circumstances as at the time of writing the bottom ten sides are separated by five points and one of the big four (us) lay in fifth position, albeit three points off of fourth place with a five point cushion over sixth. However the less predictable league situation pre-Premiership with for instance a side like West Ham between 1984-86 finishing two points from relegation one year and four points off the title the next with virtually the same side is not very likely. Neither is a title winning side like Arsenal in 1989 who only had one top four finish in the previous five years. However two League Cup finals in the previous two seasons went some way as a stepping stone for George Graham’s fledgling side, though the final of 2007 unlike 1987 and 1988 was not even deemed worthy of a full first team.
The League Cup always had a lesser glamour compared with the FA Cup, however since the extension of the Champions League to third and fourth places a decade ago it too has lost its shine. I don’t believe we will historically get the credit we deserve for our record of seven semi finals in eight years between 1998 and 2005 and three wins over four years 2002-2005. For me the egalitarian solution to break the monotony and revitalise the FA Cup is for all associations with three to four entrants in the Champions League to give their last spot to their cup winners. Unfair that a side finishing tenth, or even from outside of the Premiership may get a Champions League spot: so what? I didn’t think we watched football for its predictability, if sides know the rules from the start they have nothing to complain about. They may just take the Cup more seriously as a result. After all, the introduction of the play-offs may have brought the unfairness of a side in sixth position getting promotion over the third placed side, but they were introduced to retain some entertainment value for lower positioned clubs at the end of the season and they’re still here two decades on. The Championship play-off final has been referred to as "the richest game of football in the world" due to the money on offer through gaining promotion to the Premier League. Surely such a title would be more befitting of the FA Cup as a passport to the riches of the Champions League?
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