When Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang declared this week that he wants to leave Arsenal to play for ‘a team wot wins things’, I don’t think he was referring to the FA Cup. His fellow (mercenary, badge-kissing hypocrite, journeyman) striker, Alexandre Lacazette said the same. Unfortunately, unless Manchester City, Liverpool or Barcelona are interested in a couple of just over the hill moody Frenchman for ‘just’ about a million quid a month, each, that ain’t gonna happen. Personally I wouldn’t employ them to wash my car, because some weeks you just know it would end up smeary, grubby, mud-splashes still visible, whereas my Albanians in Mint Green leave it pristine and sparkly for just 8 quid. Albanian car-washers are much more consistent than Arsenal football players. In fact tests have shown that in terms of moodiness and sulking, Arsenal players are worse than even teenage girls. With whom they share many other traits.

But the mystery is this. Why is the FA Cup, the oldest club… whatever, competition, in the entire known universe, other than maybe The Ashes, treated with such contempt by everybody in the Premiership, when not so long ago it carried massive prestige and honour? Manchester United won ‘The Treble’, not ‘the double and the FA Cup’. Mainly because winning ‘the double’ has always meant the League and the Cup. The Champions League was always the ‘out of reach’ and ‘totally exotic’ thing seldom won Brits. Forriners won it. Not our forriners, but other ones. Yet now it is the only cup that counts for anything.

The new FA Cup rule is this: if your team wins then you proclaim ‘the magic of the Cup’. If they lose, then ‘the FA Cup has lost its sparkle’. It’s simple and useful. Because you can blame the Cup rather than your useless team.

In truth though, the cup has ‘lost its sparkle’. Because just a few days after playing the totally manic ‘Christmas schedule’ of 19 matches in 4 days, or thereabouts, the clubs, all battered, bruised and with growing injury lists, have to play the 3rd round of the cup. At a time when the league season is turning into something more meaningful and significant and battles intensify at both ends of the Premiership.

And the Premiership is a money thing. It’s not about ‘local’ and its not about ‘football’. They are just vehicles for corporations to reap massive financial rewards. And as most club owners are, firstly, not interested in football so much as they are money, and secondly, aren’t British so didn’t grow up with the ‘magic of the Cup’, they don’t give a shit about it. It doesn’t earn them money and only stands to injure players who then won’t be fit for the league games which pay their salaries. The only Cup any player, and certainly owner, wants to win is the Champions League. THAT has prestige. That has gravitas. That makes you ‘a player’.

The league has always been about consistency over a long season. The Cup is more about occasional brilliance and rising to special occasions. So was generally more of an ‘anyone can win it’ kind of deal. But now only Man City, Chelsea and Liverpool win all the cups, other teams don’t really bother. Why should they when it might compromise their league status?

Which is why we must all hold up Leicester City as a fucking beacon of potential. As proof that it is possible to win big things with little money. Playing within the financial rules rather than writing your own new ones. They alone broke the monopoly of the ‘rich clubs’ winning everything. And it should fill us all with hope.

Unfortunately that’s not an abundant commodity in most football fans. We’ve all been bitten by it too many times.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx