When is the FA Cup not the FA Cup?

Apparently much more important than you'd previously thought 

It’s been much maligned over the course of the past few years as an inferior relation to the other, more popular, more rewarding versions on which it’s modelled, and for once we’re not talking about our Tinder accounts. 2016’s never-ending festival of football hoves into view this week with the League Cup semi-finals, which see Liverpool travel to Stoke and Manchester City to Everton.

Avoiding The Unavoidable – The Story So Far... [Part 1 of 2]

Not a two-footed tackle in sight

With dissatisfaction at the plight of the Premier League and its gaudy bells and whistles growing, one man took a stand. And so far, he doesn't regret it. We welcome back James Longhurst, who charts a Premier League-less existence.

I think it was a combination of getting older, fatherhood and the ever growing dignity chasm between football and other sports that led me to take a season off from the Premier League.

Actually, I think it was exclusively the dignity chasm.

Don't You Know Who He Is?

'How long left? 88 minutes?!'

In true Spongers style, we celebrate the return of the Premier League by looking back at some FA Cup stuff from about six days ago. Sort of.

Here’s a little joke for you. There are these three pieces of string, right, and they’re trying to get into a club which doesn’t allow pieces of string inside. They’ve tried every combination, they’ve swapped jumpers, they’ve been round the block and come back twice. One gets fed up, so he’s going, ‘Leave this to me lads, I’ve got an idea’. So he ruffles up his hair, right, and swans up to the door with his arms folded. And the bouncers go, ‘Here, aren’t you a piece of string?’. And he goes, ‘No, I’m afraid not’.

The Runs #4: Macclesfield Town and the Ince Effect

"HOW MANY defeats?"

Over to Spongers' own Rob MacDonald, who couldn't even manage to stick to the blueprint and just write about one run.

The joy in supporting a team that seldom achieves is rarely the accolades or silver pots. It’s the sublime and often accidental skill, the flashes of inspiration amid the darkness and brutality of potato patch pitches and lower league football; the fleeting moments when the impossible dream seems almost possible.

The Runs #3: Arsenal's Invincibles (and the fundamental nature of humanity)

Some might-have-beens, May 2004

Over to the ever-superb Dan Forman (@dannyforman) for a look at Arsenal's Invincibles and the very fabric of fandom...

What does it say about the mindset of the modern football fan that I felt slightly flat at Highbury on 15 May 2004? My team had just completed an unbeaten league season, an extraordinary sporting accomplishment by any standard. Perhaps it hadn't "sunk in yet". Perhaps it was so unusual that it was too hard to comprehend. But perhaps [insert pompous cod psychoanalysis here], football can never make us truly happy.

Teams That Made Us Fall In Love With Football #11 Sheffield Wednesday '93

Never ones to do things by the book, here's number 11 in our supposed 10-part series. Welcome to Magic Spongers, Mr Alex Douglas

Bill Shankly once said: ‘Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.’ Although I don’t wholly agree with the sentiment, I have always thought that football was a good analogy for life. If football is the journey, then the teams that accompany us are our partners. I have to admit that in my early teens, I was a bit of a slag, chasing shirt. I have had exotic romances with foreign mistresses including a dirty weekend in Paris (St Germain) and an ultimately destructive on-off relationship with England. But if Manchester United were to become my life partner then the Sheffield Wednesday team of 93’ was my first kiss. It was an affair to remember.

Podcast Episode Two: To Me, To You

Here we go: the difficult second podcast. This week: we discuss the state of refereeing in the game, the tightening bottoms at the Premier League's tightening bottom and much of the same inanity as last time out.

Just click the arty picture. Lovely.

Strength In Reserve

"What the HELL was I watching on YouTube?"

We awake this morning to a brave new world. A new order is established comrades, as it has emerged that Manchester United and Arsenal have dreadfully weak squads, that behind their first elevens they can only muster players of a lower-league standard and they had better have a bloody good think about that before having the temerity to beat Barcelona or win any league titles in future.

Crawley's Cup Runneth Over

"Never you mind how much we're on a week"

With all the batshit mentalism flying around in the Premier League on transfer deadline day, I’ve decided not to dignify it with a response. Aside from an unintelligible ‘URGH?!?!’. No doubt the Sky Sports Newsroom resembled some sort of binge-driven party aftermath this morning, as Jim White stumbled around mumbling something about helicopters and Iain Dowie’s face, and Bryan Swanson beats the shit out of what was LITERALLY his transfer window, screaming something about being a proper journalist and not a glorified gameshow assistant.

The Cup of Good Hope

'What's up?'

'Bloody Burnley away son, that's what's up'

In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, we can find Harrison Ford’s most profound/cheesy/tediously predictable moment in film. Faced with choosing the sweet apple of the Holy Grail from a line-up mainly featuring gaudy onions festooned with jewels and bling, beckoning him with their shiny little cubic zirconia ring-adorned bastard fingers, Indy picks a small wooden cup. A symbol of humble hopes and dreams. A cup neither unblemished by symbols of the greed of man, nor blighted by the accessibility only great wealth can facilitate.