When my team won the cup over 30 years ago after many barren seasons, I queued round the ground for over an hour for 5 precious seconds with the trophy in my hands, and I regarded that as a privilege to be so close to the object of my dreams. The photo is still on the mantelpiece, even though as time passed it became less a souvenir of an unforgettable final and more a sad relic of when I had hair. But these are changing times. The Premier League or Champions League trophies would draw a crowd but the FA Cup is strictly a second class irrelevance for the hordes of children and young people flooding our normally peaceful park. Next to the deserted tent, the queue for the burgers is twenty deep. It’s a shame.

25 pitches, 6 a side, 8 minutes each way, anticipation and excitement in the air. My grandson’s team take the field with determined faces and hopes high but even they find it hard to sustain this early eagerness after their third defeat in a row. They kick off for their final match two men down. A hastily convened search party finds the striker in the candy floss queue and a defender on the bouncy castle.

Their opponents have taken a different approach. Their entourage are gathered under two large gazebos, the players marshalled onto benches where they must remain between games, sheltering from the sun and their liquid intake constantly monitored. Their fathers snort with derision at the announcement that the under 7s are playing for fun and will all get a medal. Each match is preceded by a 5 minute tactics talk from the coach. These boys are 10 years old.

We urge our lads on, although frankly the search for something to praise becomes more desperate as time passes, even for an optimist like me. At one point they did get the ball in the opponents’ half. Increasingly the dreary moan of our coach intrudes on our efforts, a series of critical and over-complicated comments that leaves the team none the wiser about what exactly they are supposed to do. At a recent match my daughter was soundly admonished by another mother. Cheering them on, she was told in no uncertain terms to be quiet ‘because you can’t be positive all the time, life’s not like that.’ Reminds me of a friend who claimed to give his son a random clip round the ear every now and again. ‘That’s how it feels for grown-ups so get used to it now.

One team are racking up 7 and 8 a game. Word spreads that they are the Arsenal under 12s. I wander over to take a look. It’s the most entertaining 10 minutes of football I’ve seen for donkey’s years. Arsenal fans, your stars may be leaving but have no fear for the future, on this evidence at least. Wenger could do a lot worse than draft the number 11 into the first team this August. He may have to if the rumours are accurate.

It’s the last game and with no hope of the final, suddenly, to my surprise and pleasure, our boys start pinging it around. I whinge under my breath at the lack of movement of our lone striker, the coach’s son, then immediately remember where I am and despise myself for such a reaction so out of keeping with this day. I’m not in my usual seat now. Then, a neat one-two in the box, admittedly our own box but it comes off, a through-ball Gerrard could only dream about and the striker nonchalantly slots it home

The allegedly malign influence of the Premier League manifests itself in many guises. Certainly it’s a shame our team haven’t rehearsed their defending from dead balls as well as their repertoire of goal celebrations, although the finger to the lips loses meaning when the opposition fans consist of three mums, a spaniel and gran in a wheelchair. In particular one boy goes down and stays down at the slightest touch, clutching his leg. Someone I know looks after a youngster whose learning disability means he takes things literally. Playing in his Chelsea shirt decorated with the name of his hero, he repeatedly threw himself to the ground when no one was anywhere near him.  When asked why, he looked excited: ‘That’s what Drogba does!

We bemoan the modern game, the money, the lack of tradition, the concerted efforts to leave the fans distant and disaffected. Yet today hundreds of kids have filled this park with one aim: playing football. Performing with freedom and expression, their unending enthusiasm remains unaffected by victory or defeat and is irresistibly infectious. The final whistle blows and immediately the players reconfigure into practice sessions in the nearest available goal. Kids too young to take part have a kick-about with dads, portly and stiff-legged, who silently pray for a stray ball to come their way so they can bring it down and pass it back, just to show they haven’t lost it

A family group gathers round the Cup. The dad’s eyes gleam brightly, mum’s long-suffering, the kids turn on the smile on the photographer’s signal for the precious fraction of a second. The trophy may not mean as much as it once did but the passion for what matters, a ball and a goal, is undiminished, passed on down the generations. Pottering in the garden later that afternoon, the cheers of joy and anguish drift by in the wind. The afternoon session is in full swing. 25 pitches, 6 a side, another bunch of hundreds of excited girls and boys. It’s natural that kids follow their heroes. If only the Premier League would learn a thing or two about the game from the kids.

Alan Fisher is @spursblogger and writes for his own blog Tottenham On My Mind.

Bill Shankly had quite a turn of phrase. “Ladies and Gentlemen, yesterday at Wembley we might have lost the Cup but you the Liverpool people have won everything. You have won the admiration of the policemen in London and you have won the admiration of the public in London.” He was talking about the fans of both Everton and Liverpool and the public and policemen of London. I’m not sure he would have such admiration for certain people in either place right now, or indeed many other places. In short, this last week in England has been … most unseemly.

This weekend sees a chance to redeem ourselves, as a nation, and put those near to us ahead of commercialism. All we’re going to be saying is, your local community needs you, your local community club needs you. Just for one week you could partake in the very first round of this season’s FA Cup and help out a club that relies on you more than the commodity you normally go and watch, the commodities that are tearing up rule books and looting our game and your pockets. We’re not intending to be preachy, simply joining the zeitgeist, and partly because that word has to go in most of our posts. Search for it, you’ll find loads. This one seems relevant, for once.

Liverpool fans. Your team is away, at 12:45. Unless you’re going, why not watch the game in the clubhouse of any of these teams … Formby, Runcorn or Bootle … and then watch their game? OK, you Toffees have the slight excuse of a 3pm home game but, well, you could give it a go?

Tottenham fans. Caught up in the middle of it all. Team not playing again. Haringey Borough are – and they play on White Hart Lane. Not actually at WHL but up the road, against AFC Kempston Rovers.

On Sunday, you Norwich City fans will be excited at the prospect of a first Premier League home game for a while so, on Saturday, you’ll all be free, won’t you? What you could do is pack your shades, if summer has arrived yet, and head for the broads to watch Wroxham Town .v. Dereham Town. Alternatively, you might want to pack your bucket and spade and head for the beach to watch two of East Anglia’s premier seaside resorts see who’s king of the sandcastle, Great Yarmouth Town .v. FC Clacton.

Geordies! Mackems! MASSIVE game on Saturday, huh? Odd kick off time though, eh? Midday? By our calculations that gives you an hour from final whistle to get to … Whitley Bay .v. Bishop Auckland or Jarrow Roofing Boldon CA .v. Guisborough Town, hell you could even go to Sunderland RCA .v. Birtley Town on Friday night.

As I said, this is not intended to be preachy and you’re probably bored already so we’ll stop but, frankly, Mr Shankly … you must move fast, you understand me? There may not be much time left for some of these clubs and, ell, it might be good for the soul. There are just three Premier League kicks off at 3pm this Saturday, you might make a difference by going somewhere new. And if you can’t do it this week, another chance is there in just two weeks time when the national team are playing and it’s Non League Day

We’re off to Ascot .v. Wembley on Friday night, Colliers Wood United .v. Chessington & Hook United on Saturday and maybe Barkingside .v. Hertford on Sunday. And all for less than it will cost to get into Arsenal .v. Liverpool, if you can source a ticket. Find a game here at the FA.

Having seen junior arsenal beat Watford yesterday I wondered if ITV would be equally as dismissive of this tie? We’ll see but I somehow doubt it. Having devoted 12.46 seconds to Brighton’s beautiful football in preference for wittering on about a transfer of a player to team not even involved in the FA Cup, our dander was up.

No matter, what a cracking game this was. Huddersfield are one of those ‘little’ clubs that younger Premier League fans sneer at and dismiss with no thought to the rich and illustrious relevance it has to their very own team. Huddersfield’s patriarch supreme and manager when winning their one and only FA Cup final was none other than Herbert Chapman, winner of not only Arsenal’s first FA Cup but also league title.

Small world.

In the life of therealfacup this game was unique. It was the first that involved the complete absence of a substance called alcohol. Not that that is a bad thing, nor do we go to football just to drink. It’s just, well, it’s a day out innit? This game was a short tube journey to a game kicking off at midday barely after opening time. As we were sneaking in through the back gate, we had to have our wits about us.

Through the press area, past the players entrance (photo op forgotten! Doh) up a dark alley, round a corner, up some stairs, through a broken gate and into the staff seating area. Objective pass, seats aquired. It wasn’t full, we were lucky.

I was looking forward to this one because I love watching Arsenal (I know, it’s not very realfacup but I/we do actually like watching good football as well) and former Ipswich Town *ahem* ‘favourite’ and world’s-most-incongruous-alice-band-wearer, Alan Lee, was starting his 26th consecutive goal-free game for Huddersfield.

Within five minutes Nick (he held the gate open while we snuck in) and I had ticked off our first trait on our Alan Lee Bingo Card. #1 – Clumsy Tackle. Before the hour had passed we also got #2 – Blaze Over Bar, #3 – Hard Work, #4 – Toddler-Like Petulance and #5 Rare But Crucial Goal. We won!

We also quickly ticked #1 – Glorious Footwork and #2 – Wayward Finish off our Arshavin Bingo Card as we talked over an engaging game that we were disappointed lacked other former Town old boy Jordan Rhodes (injured). Aside from that we were eager to see what all the fuss was about Anthony Pilkington.

20 minutes of, largely, Arsenal possession with the occasional wide foray from Huddersfield, Niklas Bendtner fuelled the bonfire on which his perceived lack of talent occasionally gets thrown by waiting for a looping ball to drop and lashing the air through which the ball had just passed. He really hit that air though. The ball itself made no connection with boot and trundled out of play for a goal kick. The laughter from the Huddersfield fans was partly drowned out by the groans from the rest of the stadium.

30 seconds later and in a similar position Bendtner burst forward and fired a shot into the corner off Tom Clarke’s unfortunately intervening thigh. Oh Niklas, you frustrating beast.

It was fair and had been coming but Huddersfield’s five man midfield was having some joy. Another former Town old boy, Gary Roberts was hugging the touchline well, Alan Lee was huffing and puffing and both Pilkington and Joey Gudjonsson were passing well and taking up good positions. Their chances increased when Nasri twanged a hamstring that threatens to derail the remote chances Arsenal have of getting out of Barcelona on time with the tie still intact.

With 40 minutes gone things got a lot better. Squillaci blatantly blocked Hunt as he tilted dangerously towards goal. The rather erratic Mark Clattenburg rightly reached for his cards but pulled out red rather than yellow. High up in the West Stand we were rather surprised, both Gibbs and Eboue appeared to be goalside and converging on Hunt so it certainly wasn’t a clear goalscoring chance.

From now until the point at which the inevitable Alan Lee goal pulled the teams level on 66 minutes, Huddersfield were significantly brighter and more dangerous than the Gooners. But, before that, it was half time. Nick was working, I was not in the mood for beer nor sufficiently well paid to afford to eat. But it’s a good place to just sit and read the programme. You can’t really argue that the Emirates is a fine example of a new stadium. I’ve been here before when it was fuller and the noise of a boisterous crowd is impressively amplified by the acoustics. When it’s not full, however, the noise gets swallowed a little bit. Not really surprising with a 59,000 crowd in (hmmm … knock a few off that in reality) today was one of the latter.

Anyway, as I was saying, Huddersfield were getting on top … Anthony Pilkington was showing why he’s well thought of with some deft touches, fine short and mid range passes and a take-down on the touchline from a huge crossfield ball that, had it been performed by Nasri, people would/should have been drooling. Gudjonsson’s distribution was mostly pinpoint and economical while Alan Lee was even running the channels! Great stuff. The extra man was telling and Arsenal often, probably through complacency rather than design, had three high upfield so were getting brutally outnumbered in midfield. McCombe had two headers, one fell inches the wrong side of the post, Almunia saved a Lee flick while both he and Gudjonsson blazed good chances over.

Then came the moment that turned the game, oddly. Alan Lee rose to plant a header past Almunia into the corner and from then on Huddersfield got nervous while Arsenal got serious and brought on Fabregas to sort out the mess. He did. Fortuitously. Not before Huddersfield spent 5 minutes kicking lumps out of anything in red that breathed. The Arsenal fans got the nark but it was a small moment of niggle that didn’t reflect the Terriers general game plan.

A curling Fabregas ball across the 6 yard box was heading out for a goal kick when McCombe nudged Bendtner in the back and the Dane threw himself down. Penalty. It was unquestionably a foul but the ball was heading out so Bendtner was hardly impeded from putting the ball away. McCombe is a silly boy, he cost his side a famous draw and Huddersfield were very unlucky not to themselves be the ones getting a late winner.

Arsenal 2 Huddersfield Town 1

Damn it!  therealfacup foiled again! Arse! Never mind, two good games in two days, one upset, one plucky underdog performance, two League One sides acquitting themselves well against loftier opposition and a sniff of a giant getting their ego bruised. This is indeed what the FA Cup is all about. It might not be as glamorous as the Champions League but you can’t tell me it’s not as exciting or engaging. If only someone would tell ITV that they are supposed to be covering good football, not brands, maybe more of you would actually see some of the good play the lower teams can provide.

Massive thanks to Nick for his gate opening skillz, he rushed off to interview some players and I headed for the very slow walk back to Islington to get myself a tapas lunch. When in Rome. Only joking.

More On … ARSENAL – ‘Let’s Concentrate On The League’

More On … ARSENAL – ‘The Men Who Hate Football’

More On … ARSENAL & THE FA Cup – ‘From Bovril To Champagne’

When I was growing up (work still very much in progress, as Simon would probably have it), there was an absolute magic about the cup. I can remember without looking it up all the winners of the FA Cup going back to 1970.  I certainly can’t do this with the First Division as it used to be called. There are a number of reasons for this.  First, as a kid my attention span was much shorter and I had no conception of the sustained effort needed to win the league.  It certainly helped that Arsenal never came close to winning the first Division, which impacted on my interest in the league title.  We did have the good fortune to play in three consecutive cup finals in the late 70s which heightened my interest in the knockout format.

The most important factor in the affection I had for the FA Cup growing up was the fact that the final and the England V Scotland game were the only two live matches I got to see throughout the whole season. As I didn’t go to many games in the 1970s the idea of seeing the entire ninety minutes of a game was a big attraction.

In 1983 ITV screened the first live league game of our generation between Tottenham Hotspur and Nottingham Forest. I remember Brian Clough expressing the view that he hoped the game would be a boring one, as he didn’t want this to be the future direction of football coverage. I recall it being a pretty good game, with Spurs prevailing 2-1. Perhaps the game would be better today had Clough been right and the whole idea of live league football scrapped. He was wrong and we are where we are.  In those days the television rights were carved up between BBC and ITV for £5.2m. The last television deal prior to the Sky deal in 1992 was for almost £50m. By the late 1980s it had become obvious that screening live football was the most valuable commodity in broadcasting. You don’t need me to tell you how the finances have spiralled since then.

Today the FA Cup Final is one of about 500 games you can watch live from start to finish if you have the time, the inclination and the technology. The loss of that rarity value has robbed the FA Cup, and particularly the final, of much of its lustre. Final day used to be such an occasion. There would be a big build up in the morning. I well remember the 1978 final between Ipswich Town and Arsenal. We had Cup Final Master Mind, It’s a Knockout and the sight of the team coaches arriving in Olympic Way. We get the same kind of build up now for the meanest of Premier League clashes, with Richard Keys trying to sell it to us as this week’s Game of the Century. (Not any more!! Hah! – Ed)

The saturation coverage of football in general has not helped the cup much either. In my day, young lad (brass band in the background playing the music from the Hovis advert) there was only about four or five hours of football programming every week. Football Focus and On The Ball at Saturday lunchtime, Match of the Day and The Big Match on weekend evenings and Sportsnight and Midweek Sports Special on a Wednesday. There is no Parkinson’s Law that decrees that the volume of information that can be intelligently broadcast on the game will expand to accommodate the hours and pages that need to be filled. There used to be an eight page pull out in the papers for the FA Cup Final. Now you get a sixteen page pull out for every week’s games.

As an Arsenal fan, I think of the FA Cup as very much third priority. If we were to win the cup and finish fifth in the Premier League I would rate this as a disaster. You may not be able to raise fourth place in the league above your head, and it may not glint in the May sunshine, but that position in the table is worth a fortune to us.

I really don’t like myself for expressing the thought in the above paragraph. I used to watch cup football for the simple joy of seeing two teams trying to beat each other in a one off game. The FA Cup was that one gap in the schedule where positions didn’t matter and all really were equal, at least for the first few minutes of the game. If Arsenal play Wrexham ten times, we will beat them on nine occasions. The last time we played them, they showed what the cup should be about, despite us having finished first the season before and Wrexham finishing ninety second. They would have been out of the league altogether if Kidderminster had had a ground up to scratch. I can look back on this as a wonderful moment for the game now, although you would have been most unwise to have put that point to me on the day it happened.

And so to motive. How have we come to think of a tournament’s value in terms of revenue rather than its potential to put something in our increasingly cavernous trophy cabinet??  The honest answer is that football at the highest level has become something of an arms race.  If our opposition have a weapon, we have to have it too.  The weapon?  Money.  I utterly deplore this trend, but I don’t see a way out of it.  Nobody will have more respect than me for the first team to do themselves out of a top four finish in order to win the FA Cup. I just hope it isn’t Arsenal that does it.

When Samuel Hill Wood assumed control of Arsenal in 1929 the board wanted to run the club as a means of providing inexpensive entertainment for the working class population of Islington.  This does sound quaint by today’s standards.  I have been very fortunate in the last few years to see some of the best players in the club’s history.  They would not have been at Arsenal under any other financial conditions than those that prevail at the highest level in the modern game.  Mr Wenger is doing what he can to build a team without paying top dollar.  His relative lack of success in the last five years has become a subject of much discussion among football fans and pundits at the lower end of the evolutionary scale.

Ironically we have done well in the FA Cup under the current management, winning the tournament four times.  It is symptomatic of the way I feel about the cup that the only two of these victories that gave me real joy were part of league and cup doubles.

My attitude to the cup in its modern state can best be summed up by an incident that occurred following the last occasion on which we won it in 2005. We were absolutely murdered by Manchester United, but managed to win on penalties. The victory was part glorious and part hilarious. Driving home with Simon the following day through West London we got caught up in heavy traffic. This was caused by Chelsea fans going to the celebrations of their recent Premier League triumph. I remember the sweetness of the previous day’s victory turning to ashes in my mouth. I wanted what they had won, but I doubt they wanted what we had just stolen.

I am totally in favour of the premise of this website, but I do have one point to make. I have to say that those waiting for the money to fall out of the Premier League and for the players to travel to the game on the same bus as the supporters are probably in for a bit of a wait. I don’t entirely accept the idea that grass roots football is any more real than the Premier League, but I whole heartedly agree that their motives for participating in the FA Cup are more genuine than that of their lofty opponents.

The problem with writing these words is that I can’t really think of any solution. There have been quite a few changes to the FA Cup since I started watching the game. I don’t believe there is any chance of going back to the way things were, and probably no appetite for it among the supporters that will follow us in time.

One of the really disrespectful practices in the FA Cup (for which my team must assume its share of guilt) is the habit of playing weakened teams in games we think of as easy. The penalty for not qualifying for the Champion’s League, being relegated or not promoted is just too high for most clubs to contemplate. The lack of respect for the cup is one of the factors that have led to its diminishment in the eyes of many. If the teams can’t be bothered with this game, why should we? Until this season the last time Tottenham beat us on our own ground was in 1993 when we put out a weakened side in the league as we were due to face Sheffield Wednesday in the FA Cup Final. How times have changed.

The media habit of referring to cup ties featuring two big Premier League teams as the game of the round is another irritant for a lot of supporters. If you are a Tooting and Mitcham fan, then your tie against Dagenham and Redbridge is the tie of the round as far as you are concerned. If Tooting and Mitcham knock Cardiff out of the cup that is as much of a shock as Wrexham beating Arsenal. You will know that from your own experience if you are a Tooting fan, but you would never learn it from the media.

The main change over the last twenty years has been the abolition of what used to be known as the cup saga. In the late 70s we once took five games to get past Sheffield Wednesday.  In 1980 we beat Liverpool in the semi final after three replays. As late as 1991 we took four games to get past Leeds United. To younger readers this may seem as quaint as the cricket match between the Gentlemen and the Players, but I remember these sagas as being quite fun. Their abandonment may have been more economic in terms of player energy and policing costs, but it is one of those tell tale signs that football can no longer be played just for the sake of it. Settling every tie in one game as the semis and the final are now would be yet another step in this direction.

Giving a place in the Champion’s League to the winner of the FA Cup seems a bit generous. Heaven knows the tournament has enough teams in it who really shouldn’t be there, as I shall doubtless find when we visit Camp Nou. Exempting the big clubs who play weakened teams from the tournament would turn it into a glorified version of the Johnson’s paint Trophy.

In short, I don’t think any cosmetic change in the tournament will really help. Competitive ethos in any particular situation either exists or it doesn’t. It cannot be forced on anyone. The tournament we grew up with has become a victim of the increasing levels of professionalism since football became a billionaire’s plaything. I think that my club has done as much as it can to arrest the development. I am not entirely happy about this, as I would rather be competitive than noble in a results driven business (or sport, as it used to be called). I fear we may look back in twenty years time and equate Peter Hill Wood’s efforts to keep Arsenal in its current corporate state with King Canute’s attempt to command the tide.

None of this could have happened without the collusion of the supporters. I include myself in this. Football fans get the game they deserve, and we are all to blame for the current state of affairs. We pay the massive ticket prices, and subscribe to Sky for £50 every month. Despite the fact that I grew up without live football, I am part of a society that has been brainwashed into thinking that I can’t live without it. The game has no more power to dictate the abandonment of its traditions than we have given it. The cup will be won this year by the Premier League team that just couldn’t be bothered to lose it. Perhaps this could also be said for the Premier League itself this year.

If you listen to a football phone in on any given Saturday and listen to supporters’ total lack of patience or tolerance of anything less than winning, we see the penalty for failure has just become too high.  Teams will put out weakened sides to avoid relegation from the Premier League or to increase their chances of getting out of the Championship.

It is not easy to blame the big teams for their declining interest in the FA Cup when the Corinthian spirit appears to be dead on both sides of the touchline. Of course the sentiment in the previous sentence can be applied to the bye line if your ticket is for a seat behind the goal. I sit in a corner quadrant, so I have the best and worst of both worlds.

What this entire essay amounts to is a man lamenting the death of the traditions with which he grew up, whilst admitting a lack of inclination to do anything about it. I am jealous of those who still can feel that excitement. Perhaps it would take Arsenal suffering what Leeds did in 2004 before I could get that feeling for the FA Cup again. In the modern world Tradition has never been much of a flood barrier against the tidal wave of progress. We have a proud tradition of coal mining, ship building, steel making and manufacturing. We don’t seem to do much of this any more. This wasn’t twenty two men chasing a ball around a field, this was something that millions of men and women depended on for their livelihood. If tradition didn’t save them, how could it possibly save a cup tournament where you can get a piece of silverware for winning six games?

None of the above need bother any of the regular readers of this website. From the point of view of the teams that have to play their first qualifying games during the cricket season, the cup will always be just as exciting and meaningful as it ever was. Supporters of teams in the top flight who can’t see past the Premier League or the Champion’s League cannot totally blight the FA Cup. It will still produce its moments of magic, but this magic has perhaps declined in its ability to enchant fans who would rather be winning something else.

As a kid, I dreamt of scoring the winning goal in the last minute of the FA Cup Final. I can’t imagine kids today having this dream. It is far more likely that they imagine themselves being dissected in slow motion by Andy Gray (Not any more!! Hah! – Ed) on the Final Word while driving home in a car the purchase price of which would keep a League Two team solvent for half a season.

The only good thing about this state of affairs is that my goodish (ahem) friend Simon Barnett has built an excellent website out of the remnants of what the FA Cup used to be. In the 70s and 80s the FA Cup was the Real FA Cup. There would have been no need for such a website. Simon would probably have tried to build such a website anyway, even though there would have been no internet to post it on. He may be a stubborn bodger, but he is our stubborn bodger.

In 1991/92 the possibility of multiple replays was scrapped in favour of deciding the tie on penalty kicks. Most fans will have memories of epic battles over many games in the FA Cup but as an Arsenal fan, I will never forget having to play yesterday’s opponents, Leeds, 4 times before dispensing them 2-1 in ’91. If that game was a year later, the last two of those games would not have been played.

But the real rot set in in 1999/2000 when Sir Alex Ferguson graciously decided to give all the other teams a chance to win the FA Cup by refusing to let United defend their title, pulling out of the competition in favour of a jolly to Brazil. People began to realise that money had really taken a hold of those at the top of the pyramid and the FA Cup’s rich tradition and history came a sorry second to cold, hard cash.

I don’t remember the date exactly, but at some point between then and now Cup replays were moved back a whole week, apparently on the advice of the police, meaning that by the time some replays came around, some fans had to be reminded what had happened in the initial game. The realisation that there are FA Cup replays on TV that evening when you’d completely forgotten who was playing who is a feeling we’ve all had in recent times. This situation, of course, does not apply in the rounds leading up to the Propers and, in our opinion, the thrill of the Cup is all the more evident in those rounds as a result.

There is, however, one tradition which seems to be clinging on like <insert Premier League manager’s name here> to his job and that is the rule that the hosting club must provide 10% of its tickets to the away side.

For those that wonder why fans bother to go to FA Cup games, I urge every one of you to go to a Cup game against a reasonably well supported lower league team and enjoy the atmosphere. Maybe even get involved yourselves?! Every year, I forget about this (and get ready, for this is a phrase you won’t read very often) superb FA ruling (I did warn you) and every year, it fills me with joy to see the Clock End full to bursting with noisy supporters of the opposition.

One of the main reasons I was drawn into supporting a football team when my Dad first took me to Highbury in 1983 was the sights and sounds of thousands of fans urging their team on but it is a rare sight these days as the clubs at the top struggle to accommodate their growing band of supporters and, inevitably, oust the aliens in favour of a more vocal home support. It does, however, have the opposite effect in my opinion. Football supporters thrive on banter – songs pinging backwards and forwards is what it’s all about and without the enemy singing back at you, there is little to respond to.

Despite my team’s abject performance (particularly in front of goal – Nicklas ‘I Am A Superstar’ Bendtner, please stand up – or sit down – on that bench, actually) yesterday, I enjoyed the game a whole lot more than the pitiful, spirit-crushing draw just three days earlier against the professional borers of Manchester City and that was, in no small part, down to their fans. I’m sure some of them will have returned to Yorkshire with the tired old phrase of ‘Highbury Library’ tripping across their tongues but home crowds always seem quiet when you’re shouting yourself hoarse all afternoon and, whilst we might not have the most vocal of support sometimes, I thought the atmosphere yesterday was excellent.

Yesterday felt like a Proper FA Cup tie and I really enjoyed it (bar the result, of course) and I firmly believe that it is the fact that Leeds brought so many noisy supporters that made the difference. I’m sure that, one day, the FA will relax this one last sensible rule from their so-easily-influenced rulebook and remove one of the enduring traditions of the cup that still remains but for now, we as fans should enjoy it, buy the away tickets, and go to the home games and help keep the atmosphere at Cup games something that the fans will look forward to. I know I do.

It’s my favourite game to play and by far and away my favourite game to watch. It’s not always absolutely brilliant – in fact, sometimes it’s crushingly dull – but most of the time there is enough to capture the imagination and keep my eyes glued to the action, even in the most dire of circumstances.

In the 27 years I have been an Arsenal supporter, I have seen us play defensive football and flowing, attacking football and most things in between. But I think I can honestly say that I believe that our style of play has almost always been based on the resources available to us.

When George Graham one-nil’ed his way to the title in ’89, money was tight and who would argue that the finish to that season wasn’t the most exciting in history? Now that we have more disposable income, we are able to pay the best players more money and, as such, are playing in a more flamboyant style.

Since Rupert Murdoch parcelled our top division up into a shiny box and sold it to the people who were already watching it for free, the financial resources of some of the Premier League’s lucky few have gone from large to vast to double vast.

First, Roman Abramovich wandered into the gleaming Toy Shop of English football and sprinkled a few hundred million over perennial failures Chelsea and turned them into World Beaters (almost). Jose Mourinho took one look at the vast pot of money he had been presented with and spent almost all of it on men who were built like outhouses. Cunningly mingled with people who could actually play football, like Arjen Robben, they bought themselves a few titles.

Gradually, they realised that it was the beefy, whinging thugs in the team that were grinding out the results so the flair players bit the dust and Chelsea turned into Bolton Gold. Constant complaints to the referee, long throws, time-wasting and lots of tough challenges seemed to be the solution to winning the league.

Last season, even greater riches were bestowed upon another club which had won precious little in recent times, Manchester City and they set out about deciding how to spend it. Judging by last night, they seem to have chosen precisely the same route to success as Chelsea, despite apparently having enough money to choose any style they like.

Arsenal tried everything they could to try and make the ball go into the opposition’s net. They failed in no small part, because City were not interested in doing anything remotely like that. I have seen hundreds and hundreds of football matches at Highbury in my time, and a lot of them (particularly in the last few years) have been very one-sided. But I don’t ever remember a team failing to have a single shot on target in the entire match – and yet this club has access to an apparently bottomless pit of money.

After the game, Mancini said

I prefer one point and being booed than no points and being applauded off the pitch

which suggests that those were the only two options. I wonder whether, given the £1bn that has apparently been spent, “three points and being applauded off the pitch” could have been a realistic prospect?

Just like Chelsea just over a week ago, City’s millionaire superstars did everything they could to prevent any football from occurring. The only passes which went towards our goal either originated in their own penalty area or were either aimlessly punted into no-mans land.

As the game wore on and it became more and more likely that they would hold out for the nil-nil draw they came for, football seemed to be the last thing on the minds of the rich men. They began to sit down for minutes at a time whenever a foul was committed. Tevez and Jo took longer to walk off the pitch when their number was held aloft in dot-matrix form than it would have taken the stadium announcer to read out the full names and addresses of every single person present. The time wasting reached its staggering crescendo when their physio attempted to take Milner off for some treatment when he was ‘injured’ inside our six-yard box by going diagonally across the pitch rather than simply leaving the pitch behind the goal that he was standing next to.

As long as no football was taking place, they were more than happy, it seemed.

Is it really the case that, given the opportunity to buy almost any player in the world, most managers would automatically choose to buy 11 players who could probably give the All Blacks a decent game rather than some that can pass and move?

If the modern game continues in this vain, maybe we should just give every club access to such funds now and every match can be like this? From an Arsenal fan’s point of view, if every single Premier League game ended 0-0, then at least we’d win the league on alphabetical order.

There’s something about FA Cup finals that makes us tune in hours before kick off and makes us invest time in believing it’s going to be great. But, more often than not, the finals are shite, and the joy is derived from earlier matches, the effort made grinding around the country to follow your team, beating better teams and being able to tell your story to mates.

That’s what we’re all about so, with a serendipitous waft of fate’s left peg, we are lucky enough to have received a scrumptious new book about FA Cup finals but it’s also from the view of the fan. It also follows on nicely from our first book review.

Matthew Eastley’s ‘From Bovril To Champagne’ is the story of 1970s FA Cup finals through the eyes of fans who were there on the day or present throughout the cup run. It is also the penultimate decade in which the underdog was able to get it’s mucky paws on England’s oldest footballing prize.

The link between this and the ‘Tale Of Two Uniteds’ is that they were written with the 40th anniversary of a 1970 FA Cup event in mind. While Jeff Perkins’ motivation was that season’s FA Cup 4th round game between Leeds and Sutton United, this one was motivated by the Leeds .v. Chelsea final. While Jeff focused mainly on those present and involved on-pitch and behind scenes, Matthew focuses on the fans.

One such fan is a Leeds supporting convent girl from Surrey who had to lie to nuns to get to the Sutton v Leeds game, another an obsessed pit electrician from Yorkshire. And there are more, at least one per side per final but often two a piece. They frame the story of each year’s Cup.

The personal stories form a good part of the book and are supported by well researched background, primarily from the prevalent print media of the time. There are also set pieces about ‘what’s on TV’ at the time or top of the ‘hit parade’ and, although not detracting from the book, these seem a little too deliberately nostalgia driven to sit comfortably in the narrative. Far more evocative and involving are the occasional contemporaneous musical or cultural references chipped in by the interviewees.

The book goes through the decade, chapter by chapter and year by year. The ’71 final starts off in a ‘Gregory’s Girl’ kind of way with Bernie and Derek’s blossoming love rotating around a will he/won’t he decision about switching teams! You can’t do that, of course.

By ’72 you’re on the one hand noting the vast chasm between the football experience of then and now, and on the other wondering if much has changed in football in 38 years after all. The three ’70s cup finals so far have seen: scandalous under-allocation of tickets to genuine fans of finals teams; the Wembley pitch is a disgrace after some short sighted money grabbing from the FA; gum chewing managers stalking the touchline; a prevalence of teams winning at all costs, pragmatically; somersault goal celebrations and fans playing games of cards and tins of beer on the train to the game.

There’s a nice balance to this book. While you could argue this is a fairly gentle stroll through Cup finals of yore, Eastley does also touch on hooliganism in passing and, in subdued judgement, also shakes a head at the officialdom that fail to take action time and again as fans are injured by crumbling stadia. There are also surprises, for me anyway, Peter Ridsdale actually was an old school Leeds fan!

As the book and the 70s reach their mid point there is a rather touching chapter on the West Ham .v. Fulham year where young supporter Peter goes through a cathartic, first-time retelling of the traumatic year his team won the cup and his brother died. The words ‘puts it all in perspective’ are overused by football fans in times of grief but the way this story intertwines the happy and sad really shows that perspective is difficult and that football really is fantastically important and symbolic to a lot of people.

Southampton triumphed in ’76 to spark off a little run of underdog wins, Man United (yes, they were once the underdog in a cup final) followed it up and Ipswich topped it off in 1978. We liked this year because the number of non-league teams hitting round three was unusually high. Six! And the quarter finals included Wrexham, Leyton Orient, Middlesborough and Millwall. Orient even got to the semis.

Somewhat disappointingly for me the Ipswich .v. Arsenal chapter doesn’t have the thread of one person’s story to frame the entire cup run but it does have a larger number of interesting fans’ stories, including one seemingly irrelevant one about an Ipswich fan called John Cross buying a suit. More later. It also contains some evocative tabloid player manipulation (dodgy photo opportunities) and some eye-witness comment from Colin Kriedwolf on the Millwall shenanigans in the Quarter Finals. I won’t go into those, some of the older Town fans will already know and for the younger ones I won’t spoil it for you.

From nuances such as the “Woods Fries Rice” and “Mariner Sinks Nelson” banners in the Ipswich end to pre-match police dog battle and model airplane competition, it informs my own lack of memory of the 1978 final that made me want to support Ipswich as a 6 year old. I don’t really remember the game itself, my knowledge of it is really all from clips, later re-runs or video and I’d forgotten how one-sided it was but reading about it I felt as if I was there and part of it.

This is ironic because, not only was I not there but someone who was felt like she wasn’t. There are important defeats I have been at where I’ve felt somewhat absent in the midst of the victors’ celebrations so I am grateful to Arsenal’s storyteller in 1978, Di Betts, for summing it up beautifully. “At the final whistle, the mixture of disappointment and deflation that had been weighing on me, ever more heavily as the match wore on, was replaced by a sense of detachment , an emotionless void, only an awareness of how pointless and wrong it felt to be even there. Now that the occasion was, from this point onwards, nothing to do with me anymore, nor any other Arsenal fan”.

In the post match euphoria we find out that one of Kevin Beattie’s ambitions was to play in the FA Cup final, how many kids say that now? It was probably Trevor Whymark’s ambition too and he was Maggie Thatcher’s ‘Man of the Match’ that day. It’s a shame for both Trevor and Maggie that he didn’t play.

That might seem irrelevant but an undercurrent of this book is the sense that football was decaying and that no one was doing anything about it. Maggie, of course, was yet to come to power but was instrumental, rightly or wrongly (or both), in changing football in to what it is now, even if she didn’t get to go as far as she wanted.

For lovers of the FA Cup, this book isn’t just about the finals. For lovers of football, this isn’t really just about the FA Cup. For lovers of fans, this isn’t just personal accounts. And for lovers of football books, this isn’t just nostalgic. It’s a good book and it’s one that you should read from cover to cover. But it’s nature of ten different ‘stories’ means it’s one you can dip into, chapter by chapter.

And talking of serendipitous (remember that?) John’ Cross’s suit got him a very big treat that May day in 1978 but you’ll have to buy the book to find out. You’ll be jealous though.

Read more about the book and author here
You can also buy the book here or go to Amazon for more reviews.

Big thanks to Phil Ham of TWTD for steering this book our way.

Damon.

Of the likely Arsenal match day squad tonight, none of the players started their careers below the Championship, most of them started at Arsenal and those that didn’t were poached young from either big foreign clubs or foreign academies. Indeed, of the squad, only Theo Walcott will have played a game for a team outside of England’s top flight. That is, of course, with the exception of Sol Campbell’s one game Notts. County aberration, which I am not sure counts.

Even when you dip down to the young fringe players, the Carling Cup squad, very few have even been loaned out to anywhere below the Championship. Wojcieck Szczesny has played for Brentford and Luke Freeman for Gillingham … errr … and that’s about it. OK, I am sure the average footballer doesn’t expect to play for one of the big four but I am damn sure they dream but the chances of those dreams coming true are precisely nil.

It’s a shame but it is illustrative of the all encompassing eye of the big four club. They never miss a kid, they hoover up all the quality and then spit the majority of it back down the pyramid when it doesn’t work out. This may well improve the chances of a young player of making the grade at another Prem or Championship club but it can just as much taint their future and lead to their hopes and expectations being dashed and their spirit being crushed. The only way is down. It also means that the big clubs almost never have to pay a smaller club a massive fee, thus restricting, if not cutting off, the oxygen from the lower leagues.

This is a simplistic argument but none the more wrong for it. We think. This is not a pop at Arsenal, it’s an observation, a sign of the times, the ethos isn’t exactly mellowed over at Chelsea, Liverpool or Man Utd either. Even the regular Premier League also-rans have little truck with foraging below the Championship, there are examples that just go to prove the rule but they are few and far between.

Legend!

Let’s put this in context a little bit, when the bulk of the weekend’s cup matches get underway they will be vying for attention with the Premier League kick off. £750 is the bounty for getting to the next round, roughly equivalent to 30 seconds worth of quality John Terry playing time. I kid you not. If JT plays 52 games this season, his wages will be nearly £1500 per minute of actual playing time.

So who’s going to get their mitts on this massive bag of cash? We couldn’t possibly run our eye over all 203 games in a Joe Cole-sized package such as this so let’s pick out a few, maybe you’ll want to pop down and see one?

At the time of writing, the FA Cup itself would appear to be getting its first outing of the season at Hertford Town on Friday evening. It is allegedly being escorted to the ground by the dad of one of the Hertford defenders. Sounds unremarkable doesn’t isn’t? Mind you, the defender in question is Pablo Ardiles, son of Spurs and Argie legend OSSIE! Hertford will be hosting Newport Pagnell Town who appear to be, singularly, the most organised and accessible club on the web, even if the colours are a bit mad on the eye. Thumbs up for NPT!

http://www.nptfc.co.uk/newsite/index.html

Also on Friday, Atherton LR visit Bacup Borough, who boast former Manchester City star Andy Hill as part of their management team. Last time Andy played professionally in the FA Cup he spent 210 minutes thwarting Arsenal in 1998 before an agonisingly close shoot out defeat.

Potton Utd .v. Hoddesdon Town boasts the competition’s youngest manager in Potton’s 24 years young joint manager, Tom Galvin. I haven’t actually researched this that thoroughly but how many other managers are 24?! 24! Hoddesdon, on the other hand, have a patron who may or may not be at the game. He’s having a very busy night tonight and he is OSSIE Ardiles!!!

The visitors to Littlehampton Town are, annoyingly, more famous for housing the training facilities for some of the Premier League’s largest wallets. Fortunately, they do actually have a famous international alumnus. Admittedly, the international team in question is the England cricket team but, nevertheless, Cobham does boast as life-member and former net minder, TMS box regular Bob Willis! We’re impressed. And, as the final Test doesn’t start until next week, he’s got no excuse to miss this.

Further North we have Billingham Synthonia .v. Birtley Town. The brilliantly monikered Synthonia line up has, in more halcyon days, included the decreasingly famous ex-players Brian Clough, Bernie Slaven and Curtis Fleming. More uniquely, they claim to be the only team to be named after Synthetic Ammonia, which gave rise to their very incongruous name when the team was affiliated with the now departed megalith of chemicals, ICI. And, once again the legend strikes, Ossie once had his house painted by ICI product!

FA Vase holders Whitley Bay host a newly ‘sponsored’ team called Dunston UTS. UTS are an engineering firm who can “achieve answers to any pipeline dilemma”. Fabulous.

Manchester’s Abbey Hey have arguably the toughest tie of this round, on paper. Albeit a home tie and on the same rung of the ladder, they face a daunting ‘Roses’ clash with Sheffield’s Hallam. Hallam, the second oldest club in the world, must have made even Bryan Gunn wince with their opening day 9-1 away victory, while Abbey Hey’s own effort might have bought a knowing grin, a 1-5 home defeat. Ossie watch has little to say here, except that he could probably still score against Norwich.

Among the others, we have ties all over the country, Stone Dominoes .v. Cadbury Athletic, Dereham Town .v. Leiston, Guildford City .v. St Francis Rangers and Barnstaple Town .v. Tavistock. Go on, support your local team. If not, support someone else’s local team, have a holiday, you’re worth it.

See also, Simon’s Brilliant Cup Game Map:

http://therealfacup.co.uk/2009/07/03/map-of-extra-qualifying-round-matches/