The FA Cup Fourth Round, played out last weekend, was most peculiar. There were sixteen matches played, involving thirty-two clubs, and not a single one was drawn. It was the first time that this had happened in a shade of fifty years. I bet no-one at the BBC saw that one coming. Equally strange is the layout of the last sixteen of the competition. Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool are all ominously present and correct (fingers crossed that they draw each other in the fifth round, then), but the rest of the Premier League has been absolutely decimated. I pointed out here before that the best possible Premier League representation in the Fifth Round would be eight clubs, and the weekend's results mean that just six have survived - the Big Four, plus Middlesbrough and Portsmouth. I can't offer a definitive solution to this riddle. I remain less than convinced that this idea that "the Premier League doesn't care about the FA Cup any more". I simply cannot accept that professional sportsmen could sell their supporters down the river like that, and I also don't think that it is in the genetic make-up of the professional sportsman to not want to win. I remain convinced that it is simply that the majority of the Premier League is nowhere near as good as it thinks it is. If the Premier League was anything like as good as it thinks it is, Everton's reserves would have rolled Oldham Athletic, Birmingham City would have beaten Huddersfield Town and so on and so forth. Until lunchtime, when the Fifth Round draw is made, it's difficult to gauge how healthy this all is for the competition (the rest of the Premier League's capitulation could be seen as simply giving the Big Four a free run to the semi-finals if they manage to avoid each other in the draw), but it does at least make a pleasant change to see some different faces at this stage of the competition.


The vast majority of the weekend's plaudits were taken by Havant & Waterlooville, who inflicted up Liverpool arguably the most excruciating forty-five minutes of football in their entire history. It was inevitable that Liverpool would eventually overpower them, but the final score of 5-2 was highly flattering, and whilst some cynics snorted over the cliches about "the magic of the FA Cup" and it being "what dreams are made of", it's worth pointing out that lazy journalism will always be lazy journalism. Some people have also wondered aloud how many of the 6,000 people that travelled up from Hampshire to Anfield will be back at West Leigh Park next week. My mind turns to Woking's FA Cup adventure in 1991, when they took a similar number of supporters to The Hawthorns for their match against West Bromwich Albion. Prior to that FA Cup run, Woking had been a fairly typical lower division non-league team, getting by on crowds of three to four hundred. Their average home crowds immediately shot up after this cup run, giving them the springboard for two promotions which took them into the Conference, where they remain to this day. We shall wait to see with interest whether Havant & Waterlooville enjoy similar success.

Yesterday's back pages certainly made interesting reading, with particular regard to Newcastle's trip to The Emirates Stadium to play Arsenal. One "senior source" (presumably a disgruntled player) noted darkly that Kevin Keegan's team talk prior to the match consisted of telling his players that "Arsenal are a great passing team. We must make sure that we pass the ball better than them", and nothing else. Such tactical acumen was thoroughly rewarded with Arsenal swatting them aside by an eventual 3-0 scoreline. Two games, no goals and out of the FA Cup. The Keegan Revolution marches on. Two further Premier League teams bit the dust against lower division opposition. There was no great surprise at Pride Park, where Derby County's new American owners saw their team thrashed at home by Preston North End, who currently occupy one of the relegation places in the Championship. They must be wondering what they've let themselves in for, there. Slightly more surprising was Manchester City's capitulation at Sheffield United, not least because Sven Goran Eriksson seemed to have turned a corner in terms of turning City into a capable, organised outfit, whilst the involvement of Bryan Robson at Bramall Lane would appear to preclude Sheffield United from doing anything with much efficiency.

In Sunday lunchtime's match, Spurs were predictably hungover against Manchester United. With a makeshift defence playing, they took the lead at Old Trafford before capitulating, and the 3-1 scoreline seemed to flatter United, with Michael Dawson getting himself sent off for deliberate handball and Radek Cerny rolled over a tame, deflected shot by Cristiano Ronaldo to sew the game game. In spite of all of this, Spurs had their chances. Jermaine Jenas was put through on goal with the score tied at 1-1 but rolled the ball tamely wide, and Dimitar Berbatov bundled the ball against the post with United leading 2-1, so it could have been different, but Spurs are going to have to put this one down to experience and redouble their efforts in the League Cup and UEFA Cup.

Elsewhere, Middlesbrough were given an almighty scare by Mansfield Town before running out 2-0 winners and Portsmouth had to come from a goal behind before beating Plymouth Argyle. In the matches between the lower division sides, Bristol Rovers beat Barnet 1-0 at Underhill, Wolverhampton Wanderers raised a few eyebrows in beating Watford 4-1 at Vicarage Road, and Luke Beckett continued his impressive record - he scored the winning goal in Huddersfield Town's 1-0 win at Oldham Athletic, meaning that he has scored in all four rounds of the cup so far this season. The draw for the Fifth Round will be made at lunchtime, and the sixteen teams left in are as follows: Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea, Portsmouth, Middlesbrough, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Cardiff City, West Bromwich Albion, Sheffield United, Coventry City, Huddersfield Town, Bristol Rovers, Barnsley, Southampton and Preston North End. You can catch up with the weekend's goals here, and there will be a lengthy report on the Liverpool vs Havant & Waterlooville match here.

When you're sitting at your desk, wishing the day away and daydreaming about the football career that you were so cruelly robbed of, what do you think of? Captaining your national team to victory in the World Cup? Winning the FA Cup or the Premier League? Scoring the winning goal in the FA Cup final? Saving a penalty in a crucial play-off match? Whatever it is that you do idly daydream about, I wouldn't mind betting that you probably don't idly daydream about finishing in thirteenth place in the Premier League. Why is it, then, that clubs such as Reading have taken the decision to field weakened teams in the FA Cup?

They're not the only ones to have to done this over the last few seasons or so, but Reading's decision to pick an under strength team at Tottenham in the Third Round of the FA Cup has been this season's most high-profile case, so it's worth taking a closer look at them in particular. Reading are, you may be surprised to know, one of the oldest clubs in English football. They were founded in 1871, and were voted into the Football League in 1920. As long ago as 1913, they toured Italy and beat Genoa and Milan on their own turf. They were nicknamed "The Biscuitmen" after the massive Huntley & Palmers biscuit factory that dominated the town and played at the rustic yet homely Elm Park. They bounced around the lower divisions, offending no-one, and earned the nation's sympathy in 1983 when their supporters combined with supporters of local rivals Oxford United to off a proposed merger of the two clubs by Robert Maxwell to form a proposed new club called Thames Valley Royals.

Somewhere along the line, though, Reading have started to get delusions of grandeur. They moved to the Madejski Stadium in 1998 (it's named after their autocratic owner, John Madejski), and were promoted to the Premier League in 2006. This season, their second in the Premier League, they decided to field an under-strength team in the FA Cup. Manager Steve Coppell was fairly blunt in his assessment of the situation: "I have got to do what I feel is right for this football club. I have been consistent every year and I will continue to be consistent. But we are going there to win - we are not going there to keep the score down". So, Reading FC, who haven't managed a major trophy in one hundred and thirty-seven years, are now too big for the FA Cup.

I am, I think, a realist. Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool are focussed on bigger prizes than the FA Cup. They, however, have big enough, strong enough squads to sail into the semi-finals of the cup with their youth teams. I've heard it said before that any one of these four clubs could win the FA Cup if they wanted to, and there's an element of truth to this. The likes of Reading, though... I don't get it. They are currently in thirteenth place in the Premier League. They're not likely to get relegated, and they're not likely to get sucked into a relegation battle, either. They were knocked out of the League Cup before the end of September, and with just thirty-eight fixtures to play in the league, they can hardly claim fixture congestion as an excuse, can they? Ironically, a full-strength Reading team might have beaten Tottenham at White Hart Lane last Saturday, and now they have a replay that they almost certainly didn't want next week. The draw for the Fourth Round has probably done for them anyway. They have to travel to Old Trafford even if they do see off a vastly improved Tottenham team. They're looking at having played a forty-three match season. The irony is that the historical evidence indicates that the FA Cup doesn't impact on a club's season. It took until Brighton & Hove Albion in 1983 for a team to make an FA Cup final and be relegated in the same season. One hundred and eleven years. It simply isn't something that happens anything like every season.

I think that they are selling their fans short. Having got themselves in the Premier League, they have a decent chance of making the FA Cup final - the strongest team that Reading FC has ever had must mean that Reading FC must have its best chance ever of actually winning something, right? Isn't this, you know, what football is supposed to be about? Reading may well stay up in the Premier League this season, but they're fooling themselves if they think that resting players for a couple of FA Cup matches is going to make the difference between staying up and not. Ultimately, they're sacrificing the possibility of giving their supporters something that, in all honesty, money can't buy in return for another season of mid-table mediocrity and their supporters should remember that for every glamorous match against Manchester United or Liverpool there will be two against the likes of Bolton Wanderers or Middlesbrough.

There is a way of resolving this. If the likes of Reading consider themselves "too big" for the FA Cup, then perhaps they should just not enter it at all. If it's, you know, too much of an effort to take the FA Cup seriously, why bother being in it in the first place? I think (and this is a bit of a wild guess, but bear with me) that the world's oldest cup competition might just about be able to withstand the shock of Reading not being in it, and the same goes for Bolton Wanderers, Birmingham City, or any of the rest of those Premier League also-rans whose sole existence now seems to be to do whatever they have to do in order to continue picking up that Sky TV cheque every year. If the summit of your ambitions is to finish in thirteenth place in the Premier League every season, then you frankly deserve it.