It's all about Premier League survival for Villa, says BBC Radio 5Live's Phil Williams

After a dramatic FA Cup weekend, it's time for an emotional reset! That's the view of Phil Williams, who's supported Aston Villa since his childhood growing up in Birmingham.

It's Phil Williams!

The BBC Radio 5Live presenter, on-air weekday evenings from 10.30, says the league game at Sunderland is more important than the FA Cup, because staying in the top-flight is key to the club's future.

And fans need to park the heightened euphoria of double victory over the Baggies - and concentrate on the dogfight.

Here's Phil in conversation with me recorded before the FA Cup win.

listen to ‘Time for an emotional reset, the Premier League is what really matters: @PhilWilliams talks to @jonnygould’ on audioBoom

It's Howard and Jonny's Albion Sandwich!

In between the two make-or-break fixtures with our nearest rivals, Howard and Jonny discuss the nervy last-gasp win over the Albion (nothing jittery about Benteke's composed penalty mind) - and why Gaby Agbonlahor might be the biggest winner in the Tim Sherwood era.

There's predictions for Saturday's FA Cup quarter-final as Albion return - and a surprise reaction from Villa fans about which Albion game was more important, in the league or the cup?

listen to ‘It's @HodgsonHoward & @jonnygould's Albion Sandwich! #utv #avfc ’ on audioBoom

Wembley minute's silence gives way to respectful applause

This got a mixed reaction when I posted it on Twitter. It's spontaneous applause from the FA Cup semi-final between Hull and Sheffield United at Wembley.

It broke out within seconds of the referee's starting whistle. Compare it to the moving silence at Anfield before Liverpool's clash with Manchester City hours earlier.

It was as if Wembley was commemorating and Anfield was mourning.

There were those who understood the clapping. But some expressed that it seemed to celebrate the fight for justice rather than commemorate the dead.

25 years on and the wounds of Hillsborough will never quite heal completely.

BEWARE: This podcast contains nuts!

Each morning on Smooth Radio at 6.30, 7.30 and 8.30, I give you the sports news straight! Well, as much as is possible when Arsene Wenger goes off on one.

Because after defeat to Blackburn Rovers in the FA Cup, it's the Champions League which remains as the only trophy Wenger can win this season. It's a trophyless streak which has lasted eight excruciating years.

Since the FA Cup win in 2005, Manchester United and Chelsea have both won eight trophies apiece - including the Champions League.

Wenger lives and breathes his Arsenal life. It hurts!

Here's my bulletin the morning of the Champions League last-16 tie between Arsenal and Bayern Munich, as the strain definitely showed on the Professor!

listen to ‘Good Morning Sports Fans! CONTAINS NUTS (audio with Wenger) @smoothbreakfast’ on Audioboo

Also on Soccermongery:

Arsene Wenger is football's Basil Fawlty!

Graeme Le Saux previews this season's FA Cup

Graeme Le Saux won the FA Cup with Chelsea in 2000

That's my girl!

I interviewed the former Chelsea and England left-back Graeme Le Saux about his experiences of winning, and indeed losing Cup Finals and I got to ask him why he thought Chelsea had dominated the competition in recent years.

Graeme also recently came out of retirement to play for Wembley in the preliminary rounds. What was it like to play professional football again in his 40's?

listen to ‘Graeme le Saux previews this season's FA Cup’ on Audioboo

Fergie's missed his chance to quit at the top

As Chelsea turn the title race around, United succumb to German efficiency in Europe. Are United prone to mistakes in their haste to win matches? Is Fergie reaching for the pipe and slippers under the weight of the Glazer's debt bubble? Jonny's view:

It was all set fair: Rome, May 2009. A second consecutive Champions League Final. Victory over Barcelona would've confirmed Manchester United as the undisputed greatest on the planet. Well, they'd already mopped up a hattrick of Premier League crowns and claimed the first-ever meaningful World Club Cup.

A third European title beckoned for Sir Alex Ferguson and having drawn level on eighteen with Liverpool as Champions of England, Fergie had fulfilled his promise of "knocking the Reds off their perch".

But Barca outplayed United. With 150 goals and six titles to their name, Messrs. Messi, Henry and Eto'o flicked mud at United's glister.

Then with Cristiano Ronaldo's defection to Madrid confirming Spain's economic and footballing superiority over England, Fergie might've wished for one more heroic 90 minute push from his never-say-die troops against Barca.

That way he could've left: unbowed, undefeated, the Greatest Of All Time.

But his boys lost badly - and like Muhammad Ali, the street fighter doesn't know when to stop.

Eleven months on, Bayern Munich have put paid to United's European bid at quarter-final stage and Chelsea have turned the title race upside down just as United were closing in. They look beatable by a dozen teams in the Premier League: emerging Villa emphatically planted their victory flag in Old Trafford soil, followed up by the ignominy of losing at home to Leeds United, two divisions below them.

Far from being the man in control, the hairdryer has a lower voltage. Sentiment's playing a role in some of his selections.

That the much-decorated Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes are still figuring isn't the Fergie of five years ago. No, back then they would've been on the Slow Boats to Everton, Newcastle and alike.

As much as Giggs still plays well, realistically he's not even a player that Spurs, Villa or Man City would race to sign. Scholes? wonderful servant but nowhere near the level required.

At the back, their squad's threadbare. Were Carrick and Fletcher really used as makeshift defenders? suddenly United's squad seemed no deeper than Stoke or Bolton's.

So the Govanator's missed his chance to quit at the very, very pinnacle of the game - or has he?

There's one way he can bow out with head held high. To go hell for leather for the Premier League title. A fourth consecutive trophy in the Old Trafford cabinet and a nineteenth in all to surpass Liverpool, would mark Fergie as the King of Kings in management. But after Chelsea, it's a Big If.

Click here: United Memories: Cantona at Manchester United

Save the FA Cup!

It's one of Soccermongery's most thoughtful writers, Marcus Stead. This time, Marcus eloquently states the case for the FA Cup. In a week when the Carling Cup truly shook a leg with two great semi-final matches, why can't the original Cup capture it again??

A popular subject of discussion on football phone-ins recently has been the question: Has the FA Cup lost its shine? I’m my view, it’s done a lot more than lose its shine- it’s now in real trouble, and time may be running out if it is to remain a serious and credible competition.

They used to say that town centres would empty on Cup Final day. The build up on TV would start while people were still having their breakfast. Those days are long gone.

However much we allow ourselves to believe Reading’s victory over Liverpool was a wonderful achievement, the fact remains there were thousands of empty seats at Anfield that night.

Last Tuesday, Cardiff City played their third-round replay against arch-rivals Bristol City in a Cardiff City Stadium that was three-quarters empty. That would’ve been unthinkable if it was a league game.
How many of us, if we’re honest, get slightly irritated when we discover that there’s an FA Cup weekend ahead? It’s become a frustrating disruption to the league programme for many.

If you’re a supporter of a big club, you have other priorities. If you support a smaller club in one of the lower divisions, it’s likely you’d swap a cup win for three points, especially if you’re challenging for promotion or fighting relegation.

I suspect ITV bought the rights because they were sold in the same package as England’s games, and I can’t help noticing that it took a very long time before anyone snapped up the rights that became available when Setanta went bust.

The FA Cup isn’t dead yet, but it needs reinventing, and must become more relevant for today’s market. All sporting events need to evolve, but many don’t notice they’re in trouble until it’s almost too late.

In cricket, the Twenty20 format has brought in millions of new fans all around the world, capturing the public’s imagination in a way nothing has done in the game for generations.

Darts has managed to re-invent itself after a period in the doldrums in the early 90s when it was all but banished from the TV screens. It’s now the second-most watched sport on Sky, and next month will see the opening night of the PDC Premier League played in front of 16,000 people at the O2 Arena.

The next few years will almost certainly see snooker brought kicking and screaming into the 21st century after years of neglect and bad management, and I’m expecting horseracing, particularly the flat, to be repackaged before too long.

Football, too, re-invented itself in the early 90s with the advent of the Premier League.

What all of these sports have in common is that they pushed themselves to the brink of oblivion before bouncing back.

Cricket was gaining a reputation as being stuffy and slow. Darts was a game played by overweight, chain-smoking, beer-swilling blokes. Snooker’s glory days had ended as the household names of the 1980s faded. Horseracing has struggled in recent years with vastly reduced coverage on non-subscription TV.

Before the Premier League, football went through a terrible decade in which hooliganism made many grounds no-go areas for families and young children, and at one point in the 1980s the BBC stopped regular transmissions of Match Of the Day on Saturday nights and replaced it with British basketball highlights.

In all of these examples, the sports in question didn’t realise they were in trouble until it was nearly too late. The FA Cup hasn’t reached that stage just yet, but it’s becoming less and less relevant by the year.

If the FA Cup is to survive as an important competition, it needs to reinvent itself, as these other events have done. There are a few ways of doing this: Firstly, introduce seeding for the third and fourth rounds. Big clubs playing the minnows is something we all love about the FA Cup, and doing this would ensure we get far more of these games. The small clubs would love it as it would greatly increase their chances of drawing a Premier League team.

One credible counter-argument to this is that the TV companies would hate the possibility of not having all-Premier League ties in these rounds. But surely the Man Utd v Leeds and Liverpool v Reading matches were the highlights of this year’s third round? Besides, come round five, the chances of there being more all-Premier League clashes greatly increases, so they’d have no real cause for complaints.

Secondly, and here’s where it gets really interesting, give the team that wins the FA Cup the fourth Champions League place. This would immediately stop big clubs from fielding reserve sides in the Cup. They wouldn’t dare risk missing out on Champions League qualification and the enormous implications it has for their clubs in terms of status and financial remuneration.

Yes, I know this would inevitably cause the number of giant-killings to reduce further, but surely fans of smaller clubs would love to see a full strength Arsenal or Chelsea playing at their tiny ground?

I’m not sure what UEFA would have to say about this and I expect a few chairmen would be up in arms about it, but these two steps would restore the FA Cup to its former glory within a year.

Make no mistake: these are dark days for the FA Cup, and it needs to act now it is to salvage its reputation as a major, first-rate competition.

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Playing a 39th game overseas will NEVER work!

By MARCUS STEAD.

Alright, alright! I'm giving Marcus the platform he deserves for this well-argued piece. Personally, I like the 39th Game idea, although I confess it doesn't quite resonate with the same force it did pre-Credit Crunch. Here's Marcus!

Most football fans I speak to seem to agree with me that the Premier League has lost some of its appeal. Some of the sparkle that made it such an attractive product in the mid-90s seems to have gone.

I’ve noticed that most of my mates aren’t as eager to see every televised game as they once were. Over the last few years, they haven’t been quite so keen to make sure they’ve finished their Sunday dinner by the time the first of two live Premier League matches comes on. They don’t seem as bothered if their girlfriends want to take a trip to the DIY store on a Sunday afternoon either.

The evidence supports my case. Viewing figures for the FA Cup have dropped alarmingly this season, and I don’t think it’s because the rights have transferred from the BBC to ITV. Some people may prefer their football on one channel over another, but I don’t for one second think that’s a decisive factor as to whether or not they watch the game.

The truth is football needs a shot in the arm- something that’ll capture the public’s imagination the way the new and glamorous Premier League did in the 92/93 season.

At present, the entire bottom half of the table are worthy candidates for relegation. Many of these teams have their share of journeymen who enjoy a hefty pay packet and don’t feel any sense of loyalty or ambition to their clubs. Too often, their managers send them out to play negative, ugly football, and in these tough economic times, the fans are voting with their feet.

Football requires a revolution on the same scale as the formation of the Premier League, and failure to do so will see the steady decline in interest which is well underway escalate over the next few years.

Various ideas have been floating around as to how best to do this, most of which are quickly and rightly dismissed as completely impractical. However, one proposal that has repeatedly been suggested during the last 12 months or so is playing an extra round of matches of overseas. Their inspiration for this proposal often comes from the success the NFL have had in staging matches at Wembley. I’m sure its many advocates are well intentioned, but really, this idea needs to be put to bed now!

When we think of English football’s global appeal, we generally think of a few clubs. Certainly, Manchester United and Liverpool have strong fan bases in Asia and other parts of the world, but does it really span much beyond that? Is there really any demand for Premier League football in other parts of the world that does not involve the top four? Let’s look at this weekend’s fixtures for inspiration:

I can see demand for tickets for Man Utd v Liverpool being massive just about anywhere where football has any kind of fan base. But how well would Sunderland v Wigan go down in Bangkok? Or what about Bolton v Fulham in Johannesburg? Or perhaps West Ham v West Brom in Shanghai? Come on, it’s hard enough to persuade people from West Brom to go and watch them play!

The second problem this would create is that it would massively devalue the league system. If, as Churchill said, democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried, then a league system is the least worst way of establishing which football team is consistently the best. Every team plays every other team home and away over the course of a season, and the team with the most points at the end wins the league.

Of course, it’s not perfect and can never be completely fair. There will always be injury lay-offs which were no fault of the player or the club, suspensions that should never have been, and bad pitches caused by allowing rugby to be played on the ground (an increasing problem, and one I’ll have to get used to in a year’s time when Cardiff City move into their new stadium). However, until somebody thinks of a fairer way of deciding it, the league system will do.

Adding an extra round of fixtures will completely destroy the league as a concept. Imagine if, at the end of the season, your team finished second in the league with only a point separating you from the winners, yet you firmly believe that the champions had a much easier ride in their overseas fixture than your team did.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if court cases soon followed. The whole purpose of the league system would be lost. Make no mistake, such a proposal would be far more controversial than introducing the play-off system in both codes of rugby (I didn’t support that idea either).

Unless these two fundamental problems can be properly addressed, it’s time to kick this idea into touch once and for all.

Also on Soccermongery: Jonny's version of the same subject

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Fulham's Cottage industry no match for the Manchester United steam-roller

By JOE MORRIS.

Tommy Trinder, the late comedian and one-time Fulham chairman, must have called the club's fans some of the luckiest people in the world. By the end of their 4-0 drubbing at the hands of Manchester United most of us felt enormously privileged. United were through to an FA Cup semi-final against Everton and Fulham looked like lost tourists in the middle of Piccadilly Circus.

Undoubtedly Fulham remain one of the most endearing clubs in the Premier League, rather like one of those cute teddy bears in Hamley's shop window. Every so often they sit comfortably in the middle of the Premier League and then just topple over when nobody expects it.

Half way through this criminally one-sided FA Cup massacre, Fulham chairman Mohammad Al Fayed just slumped forward in his seat as if life had well and truly dealt him a poor hand. Perhaps he was more concerned about the profit margins at Harrods.

Al Fayed has had more than his fair share of heartache in recent years but it may not be very often that teams of Manchester United's stature come along and spoil his day.

Football, as we all know, is all about attitudes and platitudes, but when it comes to sheer class then United could probably give you chapter and verse. Once again United displayed all the game's most commendable values. There was, as ever, a marvellous sense of proportion and perspective about United's football that holds us totally mesmerised.

Wherever you looked, every red United shirt knew exactly where the other was. From the heart of their defence to the front line passes were zipped to feet with instinctive accuracy. Darren Fletcher. Michael Carrick and Patrice Evra moved around Craven Cottage like the bishops and knights on a chessboard. It was only when United scored an almost inevitable fourth goal that Fulham were in checkmate.

But it was the strength of Sir Alex Ferguson's new breed of ball players who caught the eye. Jonny Evans, Danny Welbeck and Richard Eckersley are the emerging kids who may turn into the next David Beckham, Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes. Maybe not overnight, but Old Trafford is priming itself for another invasion of the country's best young talent.

For Fulham this was the day when more pressing issues seemed to pre-occupy them. They lie in the calm waters of the Premier League but they may have to get their priorities right. There is an unnerving brittleness and vulnerability about the Cottagers that does leave you feeling queasy. Their football is correct and proper but manager Roy Hodgson may have to keep his players' heads above water.

We all know that Fulham were once regarded as one of football's playful circus acts who loved to fall over. During the 1950s their midfield maestro Johnny Haynes, almost single-handedly at times, kept Craven Cottage fans on their feet. Haynes was the chief architect and engineer of everything that Fulham turned their hand to. There was Tosh Chamberlain, Jimmy Hill and Bobby Robson, men of honour and honesty.

But Fulham are still prone to pratfalls and moments of extreme amateurism. You can almost see the incompetence when things go horribly wrong. After years in the old Second Division and Third you can almost see the cracks. Craven Cottage still has an old fashioned Victorian feel and the neatly black and white painted balcony at one end of the ground is a quaint throwback to another age.

Throughout this savage 4-0 mauling by United's roaring lions, the midfield graft and industry of Danny Murphy and Simon Davies did show some initiative for Fulham. But for all the hard running and red-blooded endeavour of Bobby Zamora and Andy Johnson, Fulham were rather like peasants at a country landowner's ball.

Manchester United are well and truly on course for a season of astonishing achievement. They will now look to an FA Cup semi-final against David Moyes' Everton confident in their own footballing knowledge.

Next for United are Jose Mourinho and Milan and the possibility of a clean sweep looks a splendid reality. Perhaps Tommy Trinder was right. We are indeed very lucky people!

Soccermongery's all about your feedback, so write away, right away!

United's enduring love affair with the FA Cup

By JOE MORRIS

In his second Soccermongery article, Joe recounts Manchester United's love affair with the Cup. I can't entirely forgive United for shunning the world's greatest cup competition in 2000 opting instead for the World Club Pot, but the FA Cup is experiencing a renaissance and United's cup bids now reflect the tournament's grandeur.

If the FA Cup is the most romantic competition in the world, then Stanley Matthews and Ian Porterfield would have been chocolates and flowers men. Both Matthews and Porterfield were the knights in shining armour and the Cup will be eternally indebted to them.

In 1953, a couple of weeks before the Coronation, a spindly-legged wing wizard called Matthews twisted the Bolton defence in knots. He swayed. shimmied, shuffled and finally bamboozled a Bolton side who seemed to have the match under their belt. Matthews was tricky, deceitful and by the time Stanley had finished with them, Bolton were glad to see the back of him. Matthews, backed by a willing nation, won the Cup for Blackpool.

Exactly 20 years later a long-haired lad named Ian Porterfield brought the old Second Division underdogs Sunderland to an ecstatic standstill when Bob Stokoe's red and white striped army lifted the Cup. From a perfect Bobby Kerr corner, the gangling Porterfield loped up from the back, trapped the ball with the skill of an acrobat on his knee, and thumped the ball ferociously past the Leeds United keeper David Harvey.

The FA Cup has never been short of defining moments: there was Ricky Villa hip swivelling past a stunned Manchester City defence, just one of Spurs' three winning goals in the 1981 Cup Final. Poor Leeds United had no answer to a Ray Crawford inspired Colchester during the early 1970s. Ronny Radford, shirt hanging out of his shorts, slid over the mud of Edgar Street to snatch an equaliser for Hereford against a well-organised Newcastle.

Allegedly the FA Cup has lost some of its popularity but you could say much the same about ten pin bowling. The Cup will never lose its essential worldwide appeal, and three years ago produced perhaps its most spellbinding Final for years. The match had so many fascinating twists and turns that Liverpool and West Ham seemed to take the game to its loftiest level.

Throughout their illustrious history, Manchester United and the FA Cup have almost been inseparable. The Cup took on a whole emotional resonance when United were beaten by Bolton in 1958. This was the year when the delectable Busby Babes were tragically taken from us on a snowy Munich airfield.

In 1963 Matt Busby stuck the proverbial two fingers up against the world when his newly re-modelled United team ran rings around Leicester City. It took another 14 years before the cheeky and extrovert Tommy Docherty convinced Lou Macari, Sammy McIlroy, Steve Coppell and Stuart Pearson could overpower an exceptionally intelligent Liverpool side with Double-winning designs.

During the 1980s Ron Atkinson's United flounced and swaggered their way to Cup Final victories against Everton and Brighton respectively. United, it seemed, had a lease and mortgage on the FA Cup. There was Ray Wilkins, a player who brought dignity and stateliness to United's midfield, Norman Whiteside, one of the youngest players to appear in a Cup Final who had the most ravenous appetite for the game.

At the beginning of the 1990s Sir Alex Ferguson added yet more ornaments to United's well decorated trophy cabinet. United finally overwhelmed a dogged and obstinate Crystal Palace side. Half way through the decade a showman and exhibitionist called Eric Cantona took on Liverpool almost single-handedly and then scored the winning goal through a forest of Liverpool legs. Chelsea were also unravelled by United with the kind of performance that bordered on the spectacular.

In their 2-1 defeat of Spurs on Sunday, United once again stepped up to the plate with a display of craft and delicacy. touch and perception. It lacked some of United's traditional silks and satins but there was an unmistakable buzz about Old Trafford that sent a shiver down the spine.

Michael Carrick. via West Ham and Spurs, is beginning to look the most controlled midfield player in the country, Paul Scholes looked like a master of his trade and Danny Welbeck, although leggy, strolls and then strokes the ball with languid arrogance. Dimitar Berbatov could yet become one of United's most prized finishers.

Then of course there is a young Portuguese winger with matinee idol looks. Cristiano Ronaldo and the FA Cup were somehow meant for each other. Ronaldo, World Footballer of the Year is now wanted by more or less every club on Planet Earth - and with every justification.

Ronaldo went through the familiar routine against a Spurs team with too much on their mind. There were the bewildering stepovers and dragbacks that are turning into his stock in trade. At one point Spurs were being pulled in two different directions. So the bricklayers and carpenters of the non League take their leave of the FA Cup. Little Kettering of the Blue Square Premier are out of the Cup and the rest of the big boys will fight it out for a day at Wembley.

But for Manchester United the love affair with the FA Cup may never fade. Their courtship with this famous Cup will remain a passionate one. For as long perhaps as time itself and football.

Also on Soccermongery: Jonny's TV Guide to watching Football on TV... er... nil-nil, Jeff!

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FA Cup Village Football - and pictorial proof that I Love The FA Cup!

The magic of the FA Cup as seen from the News Of The World's backpage. I'd like to have been at this cuptie!

Arsenal played from left-to-right, Barnsley from right-to-left and Chelsea, coached by Ray Wilkins, played sideways.

The replay kicks off when the DJ upsets Steven Gerrard.

It's live and exclusive only on ITV, Setanta, Chelsea TV, Arsenal TV and the BBC. Village football rules apply. Chopper Harris and John Fashanu are vying for recalls.

Actually, arranging the scores like this is a canny way of burying bad news if you're Mark Hughes. He could tell Abu Dhabi Babby that Manchester City drew nil-nil at Stoke instead!

By the way, I love the FA Cup. Here's proof (it's me kissing it!)

Also on Soccermongery: January Transfer Window Comment and Podcast Laugh: Jose Mourinho sings the Blues