The real truth about what EFL clubs think of FA Cup replays and how they hide the fact they’re happy to lose – managers candidly reveal to IAN LADYMAN why, sometimes, being knocked out is the best option

All football managers want to win but sometimes in recent years it has felt better to lose than to draw.

Not in the moment, no. In the moment a defeat is a defeat and it hurts. But in the FA Cup a draw has traditionally meant a replay and the truth is that for many involved in the cut and thrust of the modern game, replay had become a dirty word.

Welcome to the other side of a debate that continues to swirl around the margins of the English game at this time of year. It is about tradition and history and fairness and equal opportunity and money and all of that is valid.

FA Cup replays have been stolen from the calendar on behalf of the big clubs who cannot see further than the end of their priorities and wants.

But the truth is that there is a flip side of an argument that bounced back into our football conversations after Tottenham‘s extra-time win at Tamworth at the weekend. And it is one discussed routinely by the men who live our game every single day, the men who can lose jobs and self-respect and standing, not on the back of famous cup games, but on the back of league performances that ultimately dictate everything.

For the managers, the line between respecting a grand old competition they grew up watching and trying to look after a squad straining at the edges in the middle of a sapping winter schedule is difficult to walk.

However, the fifth-tier side conceded three during extra-time and were knocked out by Spurs

The FA Cup third round sparked an interesting debate around the structure of the competition

And if pragmatism comes first, who can really blame them?

‘I rested most of my team last weekend and it was the right thing to do,’ one EFL manager tells me. ‘I put some senior players on the bench but it was for show. They were never coming on.

‘At one stage I forgot myself and asked one to warm up. My coaching staff had to remind me. I told him to sit down again. I wanted to win our game but did I want us to draw it and then go to extra time? I am not sure I did.

‘And the worst outcome of all would have been a replay. 100 per cent. I love the FA Cup but if you saw the list of injuries on the wall in my office and then had a look at the games we have around Christmas and New Year, you would understand my point of view.’

The ambivalence towards our most famous cup competition is perhaps felt most keenly in the Championship and the lower end of the Premier League. For those punching upwards, promotion and the windfall that comes with it means everything. For those already in the top division, relegation feels catastrophic.

Some Championship teams have played ten games since the final weekend of November. That’s about one every three and a half days. In the Premier League there was a full programme in the midweek following last weekend’s FA Cup ties.

Thomas Frank rested his Brentford first team for the cup game at home to Plymouth and lost. On the Tuesday, his first XI faced Manchester City and found the energy to recover a 2-0 deficit and draw. On Saturday they face Liverpool. Against that background, can we blame Frank for treating the Cup like a second-class event?

‘I spoke to my owner before I chose my team for the FA Cup,’ another manager from the pyramid told me. ‘He got it. He knows that a game in the next round against a big team would have made us money. But he also knows I have to try and get us promoted.

Managers from the EFL have expressed why a replay is not always beneficial to their sides

Some have claimed that the congested fixture schedule draws concerns over player fitness 

‘And then we won anyway. And still didn’t get the tie we wanted!! So in couple of weeks I will be making the same decisions again, won’t I?’

When we talk about the FA Cup and, to a lesser degree, the Carabao Cup, it tends to be from an emotional standpoint. I have been guilty of it. The fact we no longer have replays doesn’t sit comfortably with me.

But what the conversation really needs to be wider. It needs to be about the calendar as a whole. Is the Premier League too big at 20 teams? Possibly. The standard at the bottom has been poor for a long time. Is the Championship too fleshy at 24 teams? Definitely. The fixture programme at that level is brutal.

In this context, something must give. The conversation about Tamworth-Tottenham was fair but the other ties in round three that would last season have gone to replays were Reading-Burnley, Sunderland-Stoke, Coventry-Sheffield Wednesday, Hull-Doncaster and Arsenal-Manchester United. Of those 10 clubs, absolutely none would have been served by a rematch.

So we move forward in an imperfect environment where the motives behind scrapping replays were murky but the argument for bringing them back is weak.

As the first EFL manager told me: ‘The FA Cup is a competition not just for the Premier League clubs but the whole of football. As such the decision to scrap replays was a disgrace. I firmly believe that. It was disgusting and selfish.

‘But would I want my team to play a replay right now? No I wouldn’t. Absolutely not.’

One manager said: ‘The FA Cup is a competition not just for the Premier League clubs but the whole of football’

15 years of Sullivan 

It is 15 years this weekend since West Ham changed ownership with David Sullivan and the late David Gold taking charge of the club.

It has not been an unsuccessful period. West Ham moved home, won a European competition and played all but one of the seasons that followed in the Premier League. They have actually been a little more progressive and stable than it sometimes feels.

You wouldn’t trust anyone there to buy you a centre forward, though. Not a bit of it. There have been in the region of around 40 strikers signed in that 15-year period and between them they have contributed less than 200 goals and fewer than 1,000 appearances.

Some of them have been very expensive. Sebastien Haller at £45million. Gianluca Scamacca, £30m. Niclas Fullkrug at £25m. Some have been less so but have moved through the club without even leaving a footprint never mind a goal.

Jordan Hugill, for example, was signed from Preston for a reported £10m seven years ago and played a total of 22 minutes. He is now at Rotherham.

All clubs make mistakes. But this trail of poor judgment endures. West Ham have signed some decent players in recent times but not enough of them. And up front they are so far in the red it’s embarrassing.

West Ham have just hired a good manager but without more consistent and measured recruitment to support him, Graham Potter will fail.

It is 15 years since David Sullivan (left) and the late David Gold (right) took charge at West Ham

Everton expectations 

Take a look at Everton’s squad and compare it those of clubs immediately above them in the Premier League.

Is it better than Manchester United’s? Or Crystal Palace’s or Tottenham’s or West Ham’s? Further up still, is it superior to those of Brighton, Brentford or Fulham?

Not it is not. So why do Everton and their supporters expect so much from their team? They are exactly where they should be in the league table.

So now David Moyes will keep them up and everybody will say he has done a good job. But so too would have Sean Dyche. His time there was respectable and satisfactory, whatever the extremists shout.