I doubt if Manchester City complaining about their fixture congestion garnered too much sympathy among the football fraternity. 

After all, the Citizens are on course to achieve back to back doubles to go with the Champions League, Super Cup and Club World Cup they won last season.  Times are hard for City with Rodri’s Vo2 Max test in danger of being a ml/kg/min down on last season.  City officials are scrambling,  High-level meetings are being had.  City keep winning.

But there is a truth to what City and Pep are saying.  I said many years ago that the future of football for TV executives all depended on getting the best players on the box more often.  It has come to pass, and nobody whose trophy cabinet is under threat particularly likes it.

In terms of scheduling, it’s clear that something had to give.  But what?  Maybe the ridiculous Home Nations Tournament that nobody asked for?  The League Cup could be worth a bit of scrutiny.  Perhaps the thousands of extra minutes added blindly to the end of Premier League games with no rhyme or reason, or the hundreds of extra minutes it takes for VAR to determine that it was a Nottingham Forest player that went down in the box, and therefore definitely not a penalty.

World Cup and European Championship qualifying groups will be shrunk to 12 groups of “4 or 5 teams” however, down from 6 and potentially knocking off two games plus travelling.  But this won’t happen until 2025 and Rodri remains tired.

So what can be done?  Well as it turns out, none of the above.  Instead, The FA has decided to s**t on the heads of the vast majority of its members, with limited consultation as it turns out, and scrap FA Cup replays.

If you take my old team, Cambridge United, an FA Cup replay such as the one that took the U’s to Old Trafford in 2015 after a 0-0 at the Abbey, gave the club the bedrock upon which it has secured its own training ground, as well as buying back their stadium which will now be redeveloped.  Cambridge also finished this season knowing that next term they will enjoy a fourth successive campaign in League One.  Planning.  Investment.  Growth!

Notwithstanding the fact that I, and thousands of others, went to both of those games on a purely sporting level and had a bloody good time.

Cambridge United’s future, partly because of the FA Cup, now looks a lot rosier than it did.  And it is worth remembering that Cambridge United doesn’t have infinite revenue streams, unlike Chelsea for example, who can simply sell itself a hotel that it already owns and stick it down on the books as income when the FFP inspector calls.  That’s very different to praying for a once a decade FA Cup replay to help ease the financial burden.  Fortunately, Paul Barry’s ownership of Cambridge United has been fantastic and FA Cup replays are now a bonus rather than the saviour.

Here’s the rub, or part of it.  The FA has spent years telling us how important the FA Cup is.  Tens of millions have been spent on branding and selling ‘the oldest cup competition in the world’ to the highest bidder as something unique and precious.  This investment in positive PR that tells us how lucky we are to have the FA Cup has a number.  60 per cent of the FA’s revenue now comes from the FA Cup.

Which is just as well, because the FA is going to have to buy the morals of lower league clubs with a portion of this revenue in order to appease them.  However, in football, as it is in life, the weakest are given just enough crumbs to ensure they keep their opinions to themselves. And this is very crumby.  £33m is the amount the FA has decided is fair.  For comparison, when the FA Cup Final kicks off on 25th May, there won’t be a single player in either starting line-up that any club can buy for £33m.

A swift look at City’s website reveals just how successful City have been under Guardiola since his arrival on these shores eight years ago.  In 300 Premier League games he has clocked up 221 wins, giving him an incredible win percentage of 73.6%.  City have picked up 54 points more than anybody else in that time and have a goal difference fast approaching 500.  The trophy count is currently 16 with further silverware seemingly imminent.

Whatever else you want to say about City’s resources, it takes hard graft, effort, desire and an unbreakable will to win football matches.  Every player is tired after matches, no player finishes the season feeling 100%.  I’m not saying it’s right, but it has definitely always been that way.  

But shouldn’t sport be difficult?  Shouldn’t it take every last fibre in your body to get over the line?  Don’t we want to see players giving everything they have to win?  And if we do, then shouldn’t sport actually hurt a bit?

Like so much of football, it all depends who’s hurting I guess.