Originally Posted by
the other bob wilson
If saying that, having experienced the Premier League and not being too keen on a Stoke City like existence where, if we had established ourselves in that division, I would have in all likelihood, have welcomed a relegation struggle to break the monotony of wondering which position between eighth and twelfth we were going to finish in, I would probably prefer winning the FA or League Cups to more of the Premier League means I'm having my cake and eating it, then I plead guilty as charged.
You implied you have been supporting City a long time, so I wonder when your attitude towards Cup competitions changed, because I refuse to believe that it was the same as it is now in, say, the eighties. My guess is that it was sometime around when you heard a manager trying to justify filling his team with reserve players for an FA or League Cup tie for the twentieth time - I'm as guilty of being brainwashed as anyone else at times, but not here because there was no footballing reason to justify fielding weakened teams in cup competitions thirty years ago and there still isn't now.
The modern attitude towards Cup competitions is purely down to finance and, given the potential consequences of relegation from the Premier League when it comes to a club's balance sheet, I have a degree of sympathy for sides at that level who are in danger of going down if they decide that they do not want to risk injury to their best players in an FA Cup tie.
However, I just don't get why any side below the top flight would act in the same way and, coming back to City, I think the attitude they have shown towards Cup competitions (i.e. almost hoping to be beaten) has been counter productive - certainly since our relegation three years ago.
You say we are in a "precarious, uncertain position" and yet all I hear since the appointment of Neil Warnock is that we won't be relegated. As it it, I tend to agree with you - although we are slowly climbing the table and gradually putting more points between us and the bottom three, it wouldn't take a lot to see us dropping again and so, I say relegation is still a distinct possibility.
Nevertheless, I think a run to, say, the Fifth Round with, possibly, a win that would send confidence levels among the team and supporters soaring (it could have been Cardiff v Swansea in Round Four if results had gone a different way) along the way, would make relegation less likely than it is after Sunday's miserable match and occasion which, for me at least, sucked away so much of the feelgood factor that had been around after the Villa win.
One last thing, there was only a year between the Stoke Play Off defeat and us beating QPR at the Millennium Stadium.