FA Cup Real Reflection of Championship Quality?

Dave Johnstone

Sometimes it’s hard to know what the Premier League and all its media outlets want you to believe about life out side the star-studded ‘big’ league. With this year’s F.A Cup containing no less than three semi-finalists from the Championship is it about time the wealth of football coverage started to spread its gaze further than Ronaldo’s flailing legs and Owen’s suspect cruciate?

If you ever divert your weekend gaze from yet another ‘Super Sunday’, the occupants of such maligned spots in the last four of England’s most prestigious cup competition may not come as much of a surprise to you.

Away from Barnsley’s remarkable efforts, perhaps the most significant display of the quality on offer outside the Premiership came with Cardiff’s comfortable 2-0 win at the Riverside against established if not exciting Middlesbrough. Perhaps the most ‘magic’ spectacle from this game was the lack of it. There was no element of luck or ‘magic’ about the result, simply a professional and accomplished performance.

Whilst admittedly Barnsley’s encounter against Chelsea did have that sprinkling of old fashioned Ronnie Radford magic, with a mud drenched pitch and home advantage to the underdogs, Cardiff’s result came on a Premiership ‘carpet’ with stadium furnishings to match. 

Looking at the team sheets and managers it would have been a struggle to pick the ‘haves’ of the Premiership from the ‘have-nots’ of the Championship. The likes of Peter Whittingham and Joe Ledley showed Cardiff had both quality and youthful exuberance on their side, compared to the excitingly named, but less excitingly talented Fabio Rochemback.

Whilst struggling Derby will have pundits wheeling out warn out clichés on how the gap between the Premiership and its younger brother has never been wider, they will conveniently forget the efforts of Sunderland and Birmingham who have coped no worse with this seasons Premiership than European quarter finalists Bolton and the billion pound circus that is Newcastle United. All Derby’s presence in the Premiership has shown is how, as exciting as they are, the Playoffs do not guarantee the best teams outside the Premiership making the step up to mix it with some of the world’s finest and wealthiest.

Whilst the Championship may have its moments where the ball seems more at home in the air than on turf, the same criticism can be levelled at the Premiership, take a look at the fixtures over recent weeks. The football and quality on offer at the JJB between Bolton and Wigan cannot fail to be at least matched, and most likely surpassed by that on offer when the likes of Charlton and West Brom lock horns in a promotion battle. With both these teams battling for those prized spots in the world’s most exciting league the talent on offer for your viewing is more than comparable.

The likes of Chinese ace Zeng Zhi and Ishmael Miller are more than capable of displaying their efforts in the Premiership.

With the ‘game 39’ proposal put forward by Chief Executive Richard Scudamore leaving Premiership chairman and SKY TV Mogul Rupert Murdoch alike salivating at the chance to cash in on the world’s ‘finest’ league, it may not be long before the Championship gets its chance to show itself as a genuine alternative to the Premiership.