Evening Telegraph: Sport: Blether with Brown

If there is an event they do not cover as well as their terrestrial competitors can, I have not seen it. When it comes to footie, golf and cricket, they are miles ahead of the rest.

Good as they are, however, the bosses at the satellite station may have to have a rethink regarding their coverage of the FA Cup.

It’s not that their camera work or general presentation is below its usual high standard — it’s the product being put on our screens that’s the problem.

Trouble is, they constantly label the cup down south as the best knockout competition in the world when it clearly no longer is.

Say 20, or even 10 years ago, that was a claim that could almost certainly have been made with justification. Even the European Cup, as was, could not lay claim to possessing the glamour of a Wembley final in May.

Now, though, things are different. As the European Cup has grown and grown to become the Champions League, the FA Cup has been heading in the other direction.

The loss of Wembley for the final has not helped, and the sight of the winners climbing two or three steps up to a podium in the middle of the pitch at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium, just does not have the same romance as when the trophy was lifted under the twin towers.

By far the greatest single factor in the competition’s demise, however, has been the increasing habit of big Premiership managers to field understrength sides as they chase the more lucrative rewards that go with a high league placing or European success.

And if this practice leads to their teams exiting the competition at the hands of lesser opposition, no-one seems to care.

Already this season, with just one round including the big boys completed, we’ve seen a Manchester United side of sorts embarrassed by non-league Exeter City and, on Tuesday, Liverpool come a cropper as a largely-unknown line-up was beaten at Burnley.

Anfield boss Rafael Benitez has won a lot of fans for the way he’s gone about his business since switching from Valencia in the summer, but no good was done to his reputation the other night.

Had there been a fully-fit squad available, only one of his starting line-up — Sami Hyypia — would have been in the XI. at Burnley and more than half the team would not even have made the bench.

Benitez, and for that matter Fergie, are not alone in undervaluing this cup. Right up to the semi-final stages, managers like Wenger, Keegan, Ranieri and now even Mourinho have all preferred to rest their big guns from cup-ties and save them for what lay ahead in the league and Europe.

By contrast, as a rule, our own Scottish Cup has not been blighted by this unfortunate selection policy, and it is to the credit of the Old Firm and other top-flight teams that they have continued to give our premier knockout competition — and the opposition — proper respect.

Nothing approaching the same can be said down south so, as excellent as their coverage is, Sky really should stop claiming the FA Cup is something it clearly is not.

PREDICTIONS —

Celtic v. Motherwell — HOME.

Dundee v. Hearts — HOME.

Dunfermline v. United — DRAW.

Hibs v. Kilmarnock — HOME.

Livingston v. ICT — DRAW.

Aberdeen v. Rangers — AWAY.

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