The FA Cup will be fine, if those who run it can resist tinkering with it any more

Some matches have VAR and others don't, and who even knows which rounds have replays now, but the FA Cup seems to be finding some sort of equilibrium.

It says something for what I presume to be the condition of the FA Cup after its first couple of rounds that I switched on the match between Crystal Palace and Everton half-expecting to be greeted by bank after bank of empty seats. That's what we do with the FA Cup now, isn't it? We all grumble about what they've done to it. The supporters of Big Clubs complain about the distraction to their bid to get into the Champions League/Europa League/avoid relegation. And the sum result of it all is that noone really ends up happy from it. This is, after all, probably the least important aspect of whatever treble, quadruple or quintuple somebody thinks they're in with a chance of completing.

But on this particular Thursday night, no. The familiarly black-clad ultras of the Holmesdale End seemed pretty pleased to be there. Selhurst Park generally looked pretty full. And in a sense, small wonder. Crystal Palace can trace their history back further than the FA itself, to 1861, but they've never won a major trophy in the intervening 162 years, the closest they've come being losing the FA Cup final twice—once after a replay—in 1990 and 2016. They finished third in the First Division in 1991 too, but this comes with caveat that they were a fairly meaty fourteen points short of the winners, Arsenal.

Yesterday morning, I woke up relatively full of vim and vigour. I managed a match from every round of the FA Cup from the Extra Preliminary Round at the the end of August to the First Round match between Eastleigh and Boreham Wood, but a combination of the date and draw of the Second Round put an end to that. I had pencilled in Wimbledon vs Ramsgate as being my match for that round, but when that was switched to the Monday night I had to hold up my little white flag and concede defeat.

Having had a cup of restorative coffee, breakfasted, showered, helped to dress and eventually shepherded the kids to school, I got home, had a shower myself, and settled down on the sofa to decide on my match for this weekend. Although I can theoretically go wherever I like on a Saturday, I'm restricted by money being tight. Good job that I am enough of a pervert to enjoy standing in the drizzle in a crowd of 90 watching portly young people kick the crap out of each other for 90 minutes and occasionally score a goal or two on a pitch of pure mud. But the FA Cup Third Round offers opportunities. Because of that reputation it has for poor attendances—and there likely will be some, this coming weekend—prices are often significantly reduced, certainly for higher at home to lower ranked clubs. It's an opportunity to spread my wings.

The decision was an easy one. Southampton vs Walsall. It ticked every single box. I haven't been there before but I have been past it on a train fairly recently, so I at least I have a rough idea of which direction to walk from the station. Trains are regular and run directly to and from the station a five minute walk from my house, so I don't really have to leave until 12. It should be inexpensive. Tickets should be available. And they were, at the extremely reasonable price of £12.50, though I still grumbled at having to pay a £1.50 ‘processing fee’—look, where I come from we pay contactless on the gate, so I am not used to this sort of thing—but there didn't seem to be an enormous number still available.

Now there is every chance that I completely mis-read it all, and that I'll turn up there on Saturday afternoon to row upon row of unoccupied red seats. But, considering that this was the Wednesday before the match, it didn't seem as though there were thousands and thousands still available. We shall see. But it has felt as though there's been a bit less grumbling about the FA Cup this year, and even though it did feel a bit strange to be watching match in this competition on a Thursday night—and yes, I do wish that just every game kicked off at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon, because good God that would be a rush of an afternoon—it felt like a proper match. It felt like a match that mattered.

I still want Spurs to win the FA Cup more than anything else. I know that the Premier League and the Champions League are more important, worth more money or whatever, and it's obviously true that I would take deep, deep pleasure from getting anywhere near either of those, but Spurs and the Cup are deeply intertwined in my football personality. The first two years that I was significantly paying attention to football, they won it. They did so again when I was 18. Conspicuously (for me, at least), they haven't done so again since.

And I know that Ange has got form, here. That early defeat to Fulham in the Carabao Cup was for me a not-insignificant blot on his record. Spurs play at home to Burnley tonight, I have little confidence that he won't play the kids and shrug his shoulders somewhat should they lose. But I do believe that a team, and a club, should always try. I don't accept “but we played the kids” as mitigation for losing. So far as I'm concerned, if they stick that shirt on and play in that match, while they're out there they are representing far more than just the financial interests and/or vanity project of a billionaire. They are that club. But I'm still keyed up in anticipation of being disappointed before most of the Third Round matches have even kicked off.

It turned out that the crowd at Selhurst Park was a little shy of 25,000. Of course, with modern football being modern football, the match between Palace and Everton wasn’t an especially edifying affair, punctuated by the daft sending off of Dominic Calvert-Lewin by a combination of the video assistants and the referee. If football is being spoiled by anything, it’s being spoiled by this sort of thing, not to mention the fundamental absurdity of having VAR for games at grounds where it’s been installed and not where it hasn’t, and the small matter of the fact that they’ve been dicking about with the format of of competitions this last few years to such an extent that it’s difficult to remember in which rounds they have binned off replays altogether for and which they haven’t. At its heart, there’s nothing wrong with the FA Cup that couldn’t be fixed by leaving it the hell alone and just letting people enjoy it.