Leicester boss Claude Puel could pay the price after misjudging public affection for FA Cup
IT WAS certainly a glory, glory Sunday for the dear old FA Cup — thanks to three classic giant-killings.
But was this a flash in the pan to make the nostalgics pine wistfully for more?
Or could it herald a sea change in how we view cup competitions?
The answer might well come at Leicester, where the future of manager Claude Puel is under renewed scrutiny after defeat by League Two Newport.
The Frenchman’s league record is decent — they sit seventh having defeated Chelsea, Manchester City and Everton over the festive period.
Last season, the Foxes finished ninth under Puel, who also guided Southampton to eighth the previous year.
Yet however admirable that track record might look in boardrooms, many supporters across the country would fully understand if Puel was sacked.
That’s because fans don’t tend to fantasize about coming seventh, eighth or ninth.
They want their club to win silverware, or at least have a damned good go. And at the core of dissatisfaction with Puel is the fact that he hasn’t been doing so.
Last month, Puel made seven changes to his starting line-up, and left Jamie Vardy out of his squad, for the EFL Cup quarter-final defeat on penalties by Manchester City — the very same approach he took at Newport.
It’s easy to sympathise with Puel, especially when the third round is staged directly after the season’s busiest run of league matches.
It was originally proposed that the Premier League’s winter break would be staged between the New Year’s Day fixtures and a Cup third round pushed back to mid-January, allowing it a proper build-up and space to breathe.
Yet that plan was casually scrapped in favour of a staggered winter break in February, starting next season.
Puel — who led Leicester’s playing staff with quiet dignity after the death of club owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha in a helicopter crash in October — can also point to his sacking by Saints, three months after a close-run League Cup final defeat to Manchester United.
And he can also argue his approach to the FA Cup is typical of clubs without the strength in depth of the big six.
Since Wimbledon’s triumph in 1988, those six have won the FA Cup 27 times out of 30 — United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool winning 25 between them.
And with those big clubs becoming so blase about it, two of the last three Cup-winning managers — United’s Louis van Gaal and Antonio Conte at Chelsea — have been sacked before their club’s next fixture.
Puel might look at that and wonder why on earth he shouldn’t rest players for FA Cup ties.
Yet along with many managers, Puel misjudged the deep-rooted and sincere affection the English football public still holds for the competition.
It probably needed a day as good as Sunday for us to remember why — although non-league Lincoln did reach the quarter-finals two years ago.
Supporters of Newport, whose club has been to the wall and back, were in rapture at their defeat of the 2016 champions.
Earlier at Craven Cottage, another League Two side in Oldham ejected top-flight Fulham, throwing up the cockle-warming story of caretaker boss and lifelong Latic Pete Wild.
He’d originally booked a train ticket and planned to watch from the away end.
But after being promoted from youth team boss, Wild ended up leaping about on the touchline in an epic show of limbs to match any of Oldham’s 4,000 fans.
Their victory will have been enjoyed all the more by neutrals who witnessed Fulham duo Neeskens Kebano and Tom Cairney committing horrible dives.
Claudio Ranieri’s men came across as everything that’s wrong with Premier League football today — £100million spent on overrated, individualistic players prone to cheating.
Up at Bramall Lane, non-league Barnet beat Championship Sheffield United, their caretaker manager Darren Currie celebrating in front of a stand named after, and containing, his uncle, Blades legend Tony.
All genuine football fans still cherish such stories.
It is often argued that supporters have fallen out of love with the Cup, as attendances are often substantially smaller than for league fixtures.
Yet this ignores the nature of season tickets, for league games only, as well as gate figures based on tickets sold rather than actual bums on seats.
No fan ever wanted the Cup to be eclipsed. It happened partly through neglect and partly through the civil war between the Premier League and FA.
Traditionalists who love the Cup shouldn’t argue against all reform — for instance, scrapping replays would mean more shocks, not fewer.
But the groundswell of opinion against Puel is a perfect case study for the Cup’s continued importance.
If he is sacked, it would doubtless be harsh and yet most romantics would allow themselves a knowing smile.
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IT'S RIB TICKLE
WHILE killing all satire by eating a steak encrusted with actual gold, Franck Ribery launched a remarkable social media rant.
The Bayern Munich man wrote: “Let’s start with the envious, the angry, surely born because of a broken condom. ‘F*** your mothers, your grandmothers and even your family tree’.”
Genuinely deplorable? Absolutely, yes.
More entertaining and honest than the vast majority of footballers’ postings? Again . . . absolutely, yes.
SO VAR-FETCHED
MORE shambles in the FA Cup from the VAR system which will infect the Premier League from next season.
Chaotic delays at Burnley and Manchester United, followed by the ridiculous decision to uphold a penalty in favour of Fulham’s Tom Cairney, who had clearly dived, against Oldham.
Many claim VAR delays and errors are mere ‘teething problems’. Don’t believe a word of it.
And if they tell you they still value the match- going experience of supporters, don’t believe a word of that either.
BLUES TAMPER
CHELSEA appear keen to terminate Tammy Abraham’s successful loan spell at Aston Villa and lend him to Wolves instead.
Not least because the England striker could potentially damage the hopes of Chelsea’s top-four rivals Arsenal and Manchester United.
As if Wolves, bankrolled by Chinese billionaires and assisted by Portuguese super-agent Jorge Mendes, need Chelsea’s cast-offs.
Loans between Premier League clubs seriously damage the competition’s integrity and Chelsea’s sideline in buy-to-rent footballers — soon to be curtailed by Fifa — stinks.
No wonder Chelsea’s brilliant English teenager Callum Hudson-Odoi is keen to get out of that system and head for the Bundesliga.
Y NOT HOPE?
TOTTENHAM v Chelsea has become consistently the most entertaining fixture in English football — so is there any chance that tonight’s League Cup semi-final at Wembley might not be marred by racist filth?
Any chance we could be spared Tottenham fans chanting the Y word and Chelsea fans claiming that they should therefore be able to chant the Y word, leaving an embattled Jewish community feeling increasingly alienated?
Some hope.
MAUR READY
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FAIR play to Everton boss Marco Silva for hitting back at criticism from predecessor Sam Allardyce.
However bad things get at Goodison, they will never regret Big Sam’s departure.
Yet it’s a bit rich for Silva to urge us to take a long-term view of his work, given how swiftly he left his previous jobs at Watford and Hull.
WAYNE ROONEY’S arrest for public intoxication and swearing at a US airport can hardly be described as completely out of character.
Which makes the tawdry PR stunt of Rooney’s ceremonial final England cap in November look like terrible judgment in hindsight.
Not that many of us needed hindsight.