On the face of it, Manchester United at Liverpool is the irresistible FA Cup tie of the weekend, with needle all the sharper for the rancorous matches the two clubs have played of late. But don’t bank on it, for the contest could be muted this time as each club knows it has far bigger fish to fry next week when the European Champions’ League resumes intensely serious business. In that, Liverpool are defending champions, of course, while United are in fierce need of continental money-spinning progress not only to decorate their season but to relieve some debts of their American owners. Two other British sides in Europe, Arsenal and Rangers, benefit by having no domestic diversions left.
For home consumption, the FA Cup’s fifth round inspires a betting man to demand decent odds for an appetising treble — that three fizzy non-Premiership upstarts (Preston North End, Brentford and Stoke City) beat respectively the flat and distracted Middlesbrough, Charlton Athletic and Birmingham City. Meanwhile, out-of-sight Premiership strutters, Chelsea, host game and spirited midgets, Colchester United, who can surely do no more than cheerfully fine-tune the Londoners’ prep for Barcelona next week in what could be the most engrossing match of the whole winter.
For little Colchester the jackpot they will bank at Stamford Bridge is nothing less than they deserve. Their dinky ground (never mentioned this week without the prefix ‘homely’) can hold only 6,000, easily the lowest capacity in Division One; the local council, which owns it, has been messing the club around for years. It is 35 years since Colchester football last made national headlines. I know because I was there. In the early 1970s, the Guardian paid a measly £6 to cover a Saturday match and the knack was to fix up to knock off a separate report under a different name for a rival.
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