Club football is back! Hurrah! But the Premier League isn’t! Boo! Because it’s FA Cup quarter-final weekend! Hurrah! There’s some really good ones too, and all manner of teams dreaming of Doing a Newcastle if Man City aren’t all boring about it.
Game to watch: Brighton v Nottingham Forest
It must surely have been impossible for pretty much every non-Man City team left in the FA Cup this year to watch Newcastle win the Carabao, and the outpouring of joy and emotion it prompted, and not start to idly dream about the very, very real chance of something similar heading their way in this competition.
Obviously it wouldn’t be as special and magical as that was, because none of the teams left in the FA Cup are Newcastle, with the bestest and most wonderful and deserving fans in the whole wide world. But it would still be pretty neat for any one of a whole bunch of overachieving clubs for whom the chance of actual major silverware remains a nevertheless uncommon one in English football’s rarefied air.
Anyone other than City winning it is interesting and novel, basically. And we’d like to think City fans will take that in the spirit it’s intended knowing it really isn’t that long since they’d have been very much in the Forest/Brighton/Bournemouth/Villa/Fulham/Palace/Preston boat themselves.
There really is such a glorious chance for someone to do something really special, and as such there really isn’t an FA Cup quarter-final this weekend that isn’t worth watching.
We do, though, think this one is the best. Whatever grumbles there may be about coming back into club football from an international break with the inevitable reduced schedule that FA Cup quarter-final weekend brings, it does also perhaps increase the chance for clubs like Brighton and Forest to throw a bit more at it.
The boring realities of football finance mean that for both these clubs the boardroom priority over the remaining weeks of the season will be securing European football via the league rather than trying to win the FA Cup, especially as in both cases that really could mean the Champions League rather than your Europas or Conferences. It’s a perfectly fair first priority.
But after two weeks without a game, there’s a bit more slack to really give this opportunity the respect it deserves. Both these two hit the international break in decent form, and whoever hits the ground running on Saturday evening really will be on the cusp of a truly spectacular season.
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Team to watch: Aston Villa
In some ways the most interesting of all the interesting teams left in the FA Cup this season, because they are perhaps the hardest to pin down on where precisely it should sit on their list of priorities.
An FA Cup quarter-final has itself been a rarity for Villa in recent years, but a Champions League quarter-final? That’s a whole other beast. It has to be the primary focus, even if getting the better of Liverpool’s conquerors PSG currently looks a huge long shot.
But they sit just that bit further off the pace in the league than Brighton and way down on Forest. And they’ve already had some Champions League fun, haven’t they?
Having been paired with the only non-Premier League team left in the competition in Preston, it really does feel like Villa should be putting an awful lot into such a tantalisingly plausible route to long-overdue silverware rather than the bid to scramble back into the European places via the league.
The seasoned winners with which they sprinkled their squad in January may have been brought in with the Champions League in mind and that’s still very much there in a couple of weeks’ time. But it really could be right here in the dear old FA Cup with all its history and its magic that their presence is most keenly felt in the end.
Player to watch: Jean-Philippe Mateta
Back in training and seemingly back in contention for another fascinating-looking quarter-final between two unfancied but in-form sides as Fulham host Crystal Palace in the first of the weekend’s four FA Cup games.
He hasn’t played since the tackle heard round the world against Millwall, but thanks to the quirks of the fixture list and the international break he has in fact only missed one Palace game in that time and reports suggest he could return as a masked man for this next FA Cup encounter.
Neither Fulham nor Palace have ever won this competition, but Palace have a notably better record at this stage than Fulham, even though it does require a bit of a trawl through the archives. Palace have won four of their last five at this stage of the competition, while Fulham have lost each of the four FA Cup quarter-finals they have reached this century.
Manager to watch: Pep Guardiola
There are seven sides left in the FA Cup for whom winning it would instantly elevate it to their finest season of the 21st century and in some cases most successful season of all time. For all the other remaining managers in the competition, winning this would be right near the top of the CV highlights.
And then there’s Pep, for whom this season can and very likely will still end with Champions League qualification and an FA Cup win yet go down as one of intense and lasting disappointment.
We’re fascinated to see how and if he motivates himself for this one, knowing that even completing the task of fighting past those clubs for whom this means so much more won’t significantly shift the needle on their season.
And that’s without even considering what further horrors might be down the road for City even beyond the fact defeat at Bournemouth this weekend condemns them to a barren season that means we won’t even have to update our favourite made-up bit of nonsense.
At which point the new question becomes how and if Pep Guardiola can rouse himself and his team to at least avoid the ignominy of missing out on the Champions League altogether.
Defeat here wouldn’t entirely end City’s season, but the more alarming thing is surely that even victory can’t truly revive it.
Football League game to watch: Hull v Luton
Two teams with Premier League pedigree but currently battling to avoid a drop into League One, with Luton’s travails particularly severe as they face what is now surely the probability rather than possibility of back-to-back relegations.
Both teams are busy pulling off the classic late-season, relegation-haunted club trick of suddenly picking up a few results here and there; Luton have two wins and a draw from their last four games, with Hull an even better two wins and two draws from theirs.
But they’re not the only ones at it, with Derby having won their last three games and every current member of the bottom nine having won at least once within their last three league games.
Luton are currently four points below and Hull three points above the trapdoor in a relegation fight that promises – unlike its Premier League equivalent – to go right down to the wire.
European game to watch: Napoli v Milan
Serie A leaders Inter will be looking for a favour from their local rivals when they travel to second-placed Napoli this weekend. If Inter have done the necessary at home to Udinese earlier on Sunday evening the gap could be six points by the time Napoli get under way against a Milan side enduring a trying league season but one in which they still hold out hope of muscling in on the European spots.