The broadcasters devalued it themselves. The financial rewards for CL qualification and for the lesser teams, avoiding relegation means it has fallen to only a rung or 2 above the League Cup.
FA Cup TV rights have been tossed around plenty of times over the last decade.
If anything we've done the competition a favour by winning it so many times and also parading it in 2014 and 2015.
Last edited by Marc Overmars; 01-06-2017 at 09:52 AM.
What Zim is saying makes sense. Look at the facts.Originally Posted by Niall Quinn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...nning_managers
Look at the top 5 most successful managers above. 4 out of 5 spent over 20 years with their respective clubs to rack up FA Cup trophies. George Ramsey, who Wenger just overtook, won it first with Villa in 1887 and his last win was 1920.
Wenger is the last of a dying breed. You won't see managers staying at one club or even one league for 5 years, yet alone 20.
Fergie is up there as one of the most successful but when you look at his record, you can see he racked up most of his wins in the 90s. Last time he won the cup was 2004. He retired in 2013. Around 2000 he stopped making the cup a priority and he played a major role in devaluing the cup by not taking part to defend his FA Cup title in 2000.
It makes sense. I highly doubt we'll see another manager beat Wenger's record unless they stay with a club for 8 years or more and win back to back FA Cup titles. Complete dominance. I'm not knocking Wenger though. He should be up there considering the years he's spent at Arsenal. Similar argument I've made for his CL qualification.
You can pick out the names of the perps who ruined the FA Cup (and football in general) from this surprisingly useful article from the Sun. Greg Dyke and Alan Sugar, who could have possibly guessed? And our club has been at the heart of everything bad that has happened to football in the last 25 years, something our owners seem particularly proud of.
The article doesn't mention Man Utd's and Ferguson's unique contribution to the destruction of the FA Cup, when they sniffed cash elsewhere and ditched the cup entirely.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/footb...d-premiership/
Für eure Sicherheit
Agree on Fergie. Was just looking on his record and after the 90s he stopped giving a fuck about the competition. Not taking part was the killer. But looking purely at Arsenal, there were people here defending Wenger's statement and it helped to cheapen the FA Cup.
Lots of people are responsible for devaluing the cup. The Beeb used to start its FA cup match day program about 9 in the morning, cup final day used to be a big thing even if you didn't support one of the teams that was in it.
Now I've watched every cup final since 1993, and you can tell how the lustre is gone in the way it's treated from being the centrepiece of the season up there with the league title itself, to being an after thought.
Wenger got the ball rolling by using the league cup to play reserve teams and youth players, and a lot of clubs followed suit
But it's money that essentially destroyed the cup.
The only thing I would say is that the cup was already cheapened and Wenger was honest enough to admit it.
What he said was stating the obvious and was a commentary on a situation that had long been assumed. That if a club like say Liverpool or Tottenham would sacrifice the cup to keep its stars fresh for a top 4 run.
We had a great reserve team though. It was genuinely fun to watch them. I don't criticise Wenger for playing the kids back then, they were great kids and could go toe to toe with most opponents.
Now thoughDon't let them anywhere near the pitch. Like the first team, all cohesion has gone and now they are just a bunch of disconnected kids with potential (provided they move elsewhere). Sad.
Für eure Sicherheit
But we also have to honest and admit that Wenger helped devalue the cup in word and action. People shouldn't get upset when that point is being made. Some of us went along with that ride and didn't see the FA Cup as an important trophy either. We still don't if we think he doesn't deserve a new contract.
All true. When we had bigger fish to fry, the two domestics cups were exercises in hubris. Could our kids beat their first team? Answer was usually yes. Meanwhile, our first team got on with the real business, until the final at least.
Now that we can't compete in anything of note, yet having helped devalue the cups, there's a move to make Wenger's record significant. It's really not. That's why he said he's keeping his latest medal. Because suddenly he needs this cup to be a hundred times more important than he ever gave it credit for in the past. Cynical stuff from him, of course. We expect that. But fans need to be careful not to shop for anything less than a proper title challenge next season.
Für eure Sicherheit
Of course you have to have been at a club for a long time to set this kind of record. No-one is going to win the trophy every year. But that doesn't mean that being a long time manager guarantees you that sort of record.
George Ramsey was at Villa 42 years and won it 6 times, Wenger has beaten that in 20.
Zim is basically saying that it's not an impressive record because Wenger has been around for ages so of course he's won it a lot. Doesn't really follow.
Posting Permissions
