Why do managers moan when they pick a weakened team?

It is happening more and more often nowadays. Top-ranking football managers are fielding weakened teams against perceived lower level opposition in cup matches, presumably to give their 'star' players a break from the hectic life of professional footballers. You know - those participants who get paid so much more than a living wage whether they play or not. The ones that train every day as a part of their job but then are deemed to be 'too tired' to turn out for a cup match.

Not only is it running the risk of a team being on a hiding to nothing, it is also depriving (as in 'ripping off') all those supporters who go to such a game expecting to see their 'heroes' in real life instead of on the telly. All those fans pay hard-earned money to be crammed into a small, often non-League, ground only to find that the team of stars they have come to see in their (often) home town is full of peripheral squad players that nobody has ever heard of, resulting in the team being unrecognisable.

And then, what happens during the game? The 'little' club of part-timers goes and pulls off the mother of all 'shocks' by winning. Yet, it doesn't end there. Often, the manager of the losing team that was expected to win by a country mile stands in front of the TV cameras while being interviewed and moans like mad because his team has been beaten by a team of butchers, bakers and candlestick makers.

Why do they do that? Not content with showing no respect to the winning team by refusing to field its big players, not content with allowing the spectators to be swindled out of their spondoolicks and not seeing the players they were expecting to see but, also the fact that the manager then has the temerity to complain about the fact that his team lost. Well, tough luck to those inconsiderate managers, because it falls totally and squarely on their heads when they pull such unfavourable and unsavoury stunts. Players being 'rested'? That's a BIG misnomer; professional players have to train most days as a part of their contract terms otherwise they will quickly be shown the door. So, instead of making the players train the day before a cup match, why not 'rest' those players at that time so that they can then please everyone in the crowd the next day by lining up against their less-fancied opposition?

Back in the day, top clubs in what was then known as the First Division (now the Premier League) always turned up with their full squads for F A Cup matches, even if those squads were small in comparison to those of the present day. A for-instance here was the time in 1970 when top club Leeds United visited Sutton United in the F A Cup. Yes, the 6-0 result against the likes of Billy Bremner, Jack Charlton, Peter Lorimer, Norman Hunter, et al, didn't exactly favour Sutton but, for Cray Wanderers supporters of the time, the recognition and signing of John Faulkner (who had moved from the Wands to Sutton at the start of that season) by Leeds manager Don Revie was a special moment. And I wouldn't mind betting that the 6-0 scoreline was softened a bit for the Sutton supporters by the thrill of seeing so many top professionals in action at their local football ground.

No doubt the trend for managers to field weakened teams against 'lesser' clubs will continue for quite a long while yet in the likes of the F A and EFL cups, as will the moaning and whingeing when their teams lose to unfancied opposition but then, doesn't that make those tournaments even more thrilling for the winning teams? They are results that cannot be expunged from the record books, after all...

Trevor Mulligan

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