Disrespecting the cups

[Rico]

Success breeds success. By winning trophies you raise the profile of the club, which in turn allows you to buy better players, which in turn gives you a better chance of winning more trophies. That surely should be the aim of every professional football club. Or you could just try to avoid relegation year after year. Oh no! We tried that, guess what? It didn't work! We got relegated!

[Clampy]

Playing devil's advocate for a second, like someone said to me earlier, we accuse the club of not being interested but the best part of 15,000 were not either.

[Simon Page]

Playing devil's advocate for a second, like someone said to me earlier, we accuse the club of not being interested but the best part of 15,000 were not either.

Could be a self-fulfilling cycle though. If club's can't be bothered, and every year the talk of the early rounds is how much clubs can't be bothered...

[sickbeggar]

Well i think everyone is interested in the financial aspect.  We've all been moaning about FFP and how its affecting us. At the moment if we don't go up we're faced with possibly another season looking for bargain basement signings and if we got to the QF's of the cup, well frankly, £360,000 is gabby's wages for a few months.. Now imagine if a QF run gets you 10m. Then suddenly you have a dilemma where its actually  financially worth getting to the QF's and if you get to the QF's you're 90 minutes away from the semi's and 20M. Changes the whole mindset i think,

Would you have been more concerned about yesterday if the prize money was greater? Like I keep saying, I get why people at the club might, but would you as a supporter? Is that what it has come down to? We can have more money to fail to compete with clubs in a higher division. I can accept there will be supporters who, unlike me, would rather be in the top flight than competing and going into matches and campaigns with uncertainty about the end result. Even I would rather be crap in the Premier League than crap in a lower division. But it's the competitive nature and shock value that draws me to football, not the income stream.

I get the FFP argument, although if we were handed £20m we'd probably spend £22m of it - and that isn't a typo. We, like the rest of football, don't follow the spirit of the law on FFP we find ways round it. But if we are using the need to get back to the top flight as our excuse this season, what about all the others? Is chasing income now the only goal? If so, again, the club can spare me the "Part of the Pride" nonsense and own its avarice.

Well maybe but you speak like this is a new thing and when the money was in the FA Cup, clubs didn't prioritise that competition. I certainly remember in the 80's Everton and others putting our crap teams before finals or semi's because the money was in the cup and not the league. in fact didn't coventry stay up because everton fielded a load of reserves.  Now if that league game had been  financially worth more than the cup final, the team may have been different

[Simon Page]

When was this glory age when the FA Cup was worth more money? Weakened teams were fielded before semis and finals because there was a very good chance of winning a pot, not a pot of cash. Plus, the prize money is but one bit of it. You also get additional cash if you are picked for TV which is more likely if you progress. Forest are getting £144K in their bin from TV today. That's still a relatively small amount, but it's additional to league money.

[Chris Smith]

Playing devil's advocate for a second, like someone said to me earlier, we accuse the club of not being interested but the best part of 15,000 were not either.

Could be a self-fulfilling cycle though. If club's can't be bothered, and every year the talk of the early rounds is how much clubs can't be bothered...

I think it is as much a generational thing as anything else. Those of us who gre up in an era of the FA Cup Final being one of the few games you could watch live on TV and singing “7 times we’ve won it...” it was a massive deal. These days where you can watch football most days of the week from all around the world then it is inevitably is going to lose it’s must watch appeal.

[Simon Page]

As well, Chris. Add in it's cold, it's right after Christmas when the cash has run out, it's usually against a side you aren't particularly interested in seeing us playing. It'll never be one reason, but I don't think what the fans think comes into it when a club decides if it wants to take the FA Cup as seriously as it could.

[Nastylee]

Success breeds success. By winning trophies you raise the profile of the club, which in turn allows you to buy better players, which in turn gives you a better chance of winning more trophies. That surely should be the aim of every professional football club. Or you could just try to avoid relegation year after year. Oh no! We tried that, guess what? It didn't work! We got relegated!

Said the Wigan and Blues fans.

[dave.woodhall]

Only six games. Yet we haven't won 6 in a row in 61 years. Maybe it's not quite so easy and even less easy these days.

It's not six in a row though is it? It's six individual games spread out over half a season.

I was chatting to someone yesterday about the FA cup, and even though our recent record is less than brilliant I remember our cup runs to the finals more so than just some random fixtures. I remember we played Wolves in the early 80s, think it may have been the fourth round. Villa Park was rammed and there were thousands of Wolves locked out. The FA cup means something special to us fans. It's a shame that the it doesn't mean as much to Steve Bruce and Co.

I don't recall Ron Saunders ever putting out a weakend  team in any competition, but then again he set out to win every single game and managed to win a few trophies along the way and won the league using only 14 players.

That year we won the league with 14 players we went out in the opening round of both league cup and FA Cup...Ipswich reached the final of the UEFA Cup and Semi's of the FA Cup, maybe it took it's toll in the end on Ipswich.

I just don't get this mock outrage of our much changed squad on here. Can honestly anyone say they were surprised at the line up yesterday? Also people moaning about the ticket price yesterday..was it really that bad? £10-£15 and £1 for kids I would imagine is cheaper than games in the conference yesterday.

I was annoyed we got beat at home by lower league opposition with a weakened team, but this is down to some players attitude on the day more than the manager being crap..on this occasion.

Pedantic point - In 80-81 we beat Leeds in the League Cup round two before losing to Cambridge in round three and Ron Saunders might have put out a full-strength side but his comments afterwards (which I'll dig out later) showed where his priorities lay.

[Three Spires Villa]

Only six games. Yet we haven't won 6 in a row in 61 years. Maybe it's not quite so easy and even less easy these days.

It's not six in a row though is it? It's six individual games spread out over half a season.

I was chatting to someone yesterday about the FA cup, and even though our recent record is less than brilliant I remember our cup runs to the finals more so than just some random fixtures. I remember we played Wolves in the early 80s, think it may have been the fourth round. Villa Park was rammed and there were thousands of Wolves locked out. The FA cup means something special to us fans. It's a shame that the it doesn't mean as much to Steve Bruce and Co.

I don't recall Ron Saunders ever putting out a weakend  team in any competition, but then again he set out to win every single game and managed to win a few trophies along the way and won the league using only 14 players.

That year we won the league with 14 players we went out in the opening round of both league cup and FA Cup...Ipswich reached the final of the UEFA Cup and Semi's of the FA Cup, maybe it took it's toll in the end on Ipswich.

I just don't get this mock outrage of our much changed squad on here. Can honestly anyone say they were surprised at the line up yesterday? Also people moaning about the ticket price yesterday..was it really that bad? £10-£15 and £1 for kids I would imagine is cheaper than games in the conference yesterday.

I was annoyed we got beat at home by lower league opposition with a weakened team, but this is down to some players attitude on the day more than the manager being crap..on this occasion.

Pedantic point - In 80-81 we beat Leeds in the League Cup round two before losing to Cambridge in round three and Ron Saunders might have put out a full-strength side but his comments afterwards (which I'll dig out later) showed where his priorities lay.

Maybe he said what he said because we lost, if he put out a full strength team, maybe he wanted to win it?

[PeterWithesShin]

In the Champions DVD Morley says Ron wasn't at all happy, mainly because of the money.

[Toronto Villa]

I know it's unrealistic anymore to expect sides to take every competition seriously in pursuit of greater prizes. And not that I want to bring up this old nugget, but when MON did that in Moscow in pursuit of the CL there was an almighty outcry in some quarters. I accept this is somewhat on a lesser scale but the principle remains the same. There are still fans who paid good money to travel to the game yesterday so I don't like when losing is blown off as "it wasn't that important" because to some it would have been.

[dave.woodhall]

Only six games. Yet we haven't won 6 in a row in 61 years. Maybe it's not quite so easy and even less easy these days.

It's not six in a row though is it? It's six individual games spread out over half a season.

I was chatting to someone yesterday about the FA cup, and even though our recent record is less than brilliant I remember our cup runs to the finals more so than just some random fixtures. I remember we played Wolves in the early 80s, think it may have been the fourth round. Villa Park was rammed and there were thousands of Wolves locked out. The FA cup means something special to us fans. It's a shame that the it doesn't mean as much to Steve Bruce and Co.

I don't recall Ron Saunders ever putting out a weakend  team in any competition, but then again he set out to win every single game and managed to win a few trophies along the way and won the league using only 14 players.

That year we won the league with 14 players we went out in the opening round of both league cup and FA Cup...Ipswich reached the final of the UEFA Cup and Semi's of the FA Cup, maybe it took it's toll in the end on Ipswich.

I just don't get this mock outrage of our much changed squad on here. Can honestly anyone say they were surprised at the line up yesterday? Also people moaning about the ticket price yesterday..was it really that bad? £10-£15 and £1 for kids I would imagine is cheaper than games in the conference yesterday.

I was annoyed we got beat at home by lower league opposition with a weakened team, but this is down to some players attitude on the day more than the manager being crap..on this occasion.

Pedantic point - In 80-81 we beat Leeds in the League Cup round two before losing to Cambridge in round three and Ron Saunders might have put out a full-strength side but his comments afterwards (which I'll dig out later) showed where his priorities lay.

Maybe he said what he said because we lost, if he put out a full strength team, maybe he wanted to win it?

And maybe he wasn't that bothered.

[TopDeck113]

Ancient history now, but surely it was a bit premature not to be bothered about progressing in the League Cup in September so as to concentrate on the League title? It was hardly as if we were among the favourites at that embryonic stage of the season, nor with any recent track record. Still, hindsight and all that.  Now if his eyes were on the bigger prize after the F.A. Cup defeat at Ipswich in the January, I can sort of understand - and, indeed, so if transpired. 

[dave.woodhall]

Ancient history now, but surely it was a bit premature not to be bothered about progressing in the League Cup in September so as to concentrate on the League title? It was hardly as if we were among the favourites at that embryonic stage of the season, nor with any recent track record. Still, hindsight and all that.  Now if his eyes were on the bigger prize after the F.A. Cup defeat at Ipswich in the January, I can sort of understand - and, indeed, so if transpired. 

"When did you think you'd win the league?"

"At the start of the season."