I think this discussion on Barnsley will be short given nobody knows much about them.

Can you imagine any of the championship sides in Europe?

Ah that's the FA Cup for you. Teams from the lower divisions often relish playing Premiership sides because of the windfall of cash they get. You can also see that they see it as an opportunity to kick and shove pampered Premiership players about. Been awhile since Forest has been in the top flight and an even longer time since they won the last of their 2 European Cups

I seriously think that the FA Cup is losing it's appeal as Premiership clubs are fielding more and more reserve players against lower opposition. Nothing wrong really since the mancs managed to trounce Derby even without a host of first team players. It just comes to show that there is a growing dispairity between Premiership sides and other English teams from the Championship and below. The money is much bigger in Europe and the Premiership which is why it's no surprise the FA Cup no longer has priority over success in Europe. You have also to consider that these days Premiership clubs are "whoring" themselves to the world, hence the growing importance of achieving success in Europe. The first sign of this was when Ferguson opted to skip the FA Cup to compete in the World Club Championships.

Before everyone goes on the defensive (which I see is already the case), I used Ferguson's example because it was the most high profile one. The point is that the FA Cup is fast losing it's prestige and this could be down to the influx of foreign players and managers.As for chosing which competitions to play in, Liverpool played in the World Club Championship and all the other tournaments back in 2006 for the record. I'm not sure if we were given an option but I the schedule was just as hectic.

Boxsystem: I'm suggesting that the reason the FA Cup is less 'glamorous' these days is because clubs are more interested in capturing the global audience, and because of this, European competitions are given top priority. Hence, big clubs tend to rest key players during the FA Cup which wasn't the case before.

Hevryn: You are right. To be honest the FA Cup exit doesn't really hurt as much as I thought it would. This doesn't mean that I wouldn't still like to be in it but to me the priority is the league and then the Champions League, not the FA Cup. Another reason is that I'm kinda accustomed to losing in domestic cup competitions, and there is always next year for me. In some sense, you could say I'm more patient. If I weren't I'd have committed suicide during the 90's. You may say that I'm trying to console myself, but this is the reality of the situation for me. Losing to Man Utd in the league for example, matters more than being dumped out of the FA Cup by Everton. Am I deluded to feel this way? Perhaps but I'm not going to lie.

This post has been edited by Duke Red: Feb 16 2009, 02:53 PM

Seriously though, does the addition of 2 - 3 games in an entire season really matter when you have a large squad? It may just be my opinion but you know the season before the number of games you have to play the next right? So why not make preparations early then?