By Nick Mabey.
The super Saints made it through to the quarter final of the FA Cup with a fine win away to Premier League Fulham.
Tonde Eckhert could have been forgiven for deprioritising the cup fixture in favour of the final push for a play-off place in the Championship. Yet he selected a very strong side, and his team delivered a convincing performance.
It is safe to assume Southampton are prioritising the momentum of an unbeaten run over the potential distraction of focusing on more than one competition.
Contrast this with the Fulham, and their manager’s decision to make nine changes to his first team, which seemed to send one of two potentially damaging messages, either “my reserves are good enough to win this” or “I’m not prioritising this fixture”. It’s beyond belief to me that a club in Fulham’s position – sitting midway in the league, safety already assured and European football unlikely – don’t realise that an FA Cup run represents their best chance of end-of-season excitement and potential glory. If they had beaten lower-league Saints they would be one match from a Wembley semi-final and three wins from a first major trophy in their history (and a route into European competition).
Before my fellow Southampton fans get too righteous, we’ve been in the same boat many times. Both Mauricio Pochettino and Ronald Koeman, our most successful managers in recent years, had the same annoying habit of seeing the FA Cup as a distraction and fielding weakened teams. In all three seasons when the club had momentum, these wise managers deprioritised the competition that has been the source of our only ever major silverware in favour of resting key players, and in each case our league season ended in more of a whimper than a bang.
Contrast this with 2018 and 2021 when Mark Hughes and Ralph Hassenhutl respectively used the FA cup as a springboard for strong finishes in the league. In both cases we made the semi-final and were rewarded with a day out at Wembley. The fact we didn’t win the cup either time is not really the point; in both cases the cup helped build momentum, rather than halt it.
Our reward for beating Fulham is a home draw with Arsenal, which for most fans will be the biggest game of the season, so why not go all-in for the cup? The counter argument is that we should ‘concentrate on the league’, even though that requires probably at least seven wins from our last eleven games to make the play-offs and then a couple more wins to get promoted. And not every fan I meet wants to see us promoted, fearing another humiliating relegation if we are not ready to go up.
Four days after the Fulham cup win, we delivered an underwhelming league performance away to a struggling West Brom side, and only scraped a draw with a very late equaliser. Did the cup distract us from this important league match? Would we have won this game if we had rested some key players on Saturday? Would Leo Scienza and Ross Stewart have avoided injury if they had not played in both games? Who knows?
There’s an argument to be made for us focusing all our efforts on getting into the league campaign but you won’t hear it from me. I love the FA Cup and dream of beating Arsenal on route to glory. And I believe that winning breeds confidence, and confidence generates wins.
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