[east-stand-nick]

With Wigan, Bradford and Swansea all reaching cup finals this season. It made me realise how poor our record is in actually reaching them. I'm sure you're all aware that we haven't got to one for more than 40 years. But why is this? In recent years has it been down to the fact we field weak sides (remember the Ipswich quarter final a few years ago?), or is it the luck of the draw?

Either way, as we now seem to finally be an established Premier League club, we should really be giving the competitions a real go.

[JtheMull]

I disapprove of fielding weak sides in cup competitions if we're playing a Prem team. We should be giving competitions a go now were an established Prem side and Ill be asking questions if we don't get to a quarter final next year.

[east-stand-nick]

I disapprove of fielding weak sides in cup competitions if we're playing a Prem team. We should be giving competitions a go now were an established Prem side and Ill be asking questions if we don't get to a quarter final next year.

Absolutely. The cups are our only realistic chances of success.

[WBASPE77]

The Ipswich game really annoyed me as that was a great chance to get to the semi finals and we had a good chance to win it.

[Brummie Road]

The Ipswich game really annoyed me as that was a great chance to get to the semi finals and we had a good chance to win it.

Totally agree, RDM made a bad call that night with his team selection and it was a real opportunity missed to progress to the Semi-Finals of a major Cup competition.

Appreciate hindsight is a wonderfull thing but when we travelled to Ipswich we were not embroiled in a relegation fight (that came later in the season - after being knocked out of both the Cups) and Ipswich were knocking around the bottom third of the Championships at the time if I recall correctly.

Personally it infuriates me when so many supporters of clubs like Albion virtually encourage coaches to pick weakened squads for the Cup games and seem to buy into the media hype that the Premiership (or Premiership status) is the be all and end all for clubs of our size and status, and the other fallacy that a domestic Cup run will somehow be to the detriment of league form or rattle on about the club not being prepared for the relatively few extra matches.

If an opportunity arises I think we should go for it and treat Cup matches in the same manner as key Premiership games but I can guarantee, if the worst came to the worst and we were struggling a bit next season (I don't think this will be the case but you can't rule it out) then come the Cup games, there will be a general consensus that we should "concentrate on the league" and give the fringe players a run out - leaving a relatively free run to the usual top 5 clubs to have a leisurely stroll to the final and rack up yet another piece of silverware to add to the boringly long list of previous trophies.   

If we were to get to a major Cup Final we'd have a day out that none of us would ever forget, and imagine the wild celebrations if we were to actually win - it would provide the kind of memories we'd be telling our grandkids about, rather than just being another day out at Wembley for your average Man U / Chelsea fan.   

We should be giving the Cups exactly the same priority as the League games in my view.

[WBASPE77]

We would have gone on to play Arsenal who that season we picked up four points so over the course of two legs we certainly had a chance against them.

[east-stand-nick]

We would have gone on to play Arsenal who that season we picked up four points so over the course of two legs we certainly had a chance against them.

Well, Blues (who were relegated that year) went on to beat them, so we certainly could have beaten them.

[leeiswba]

Its a farce that managers put out a weakened team in cups. Id take a bottom half finish everyday of the week if it meant winning a cup and getting to Europe.

Enjoyed the season a lot but since we have realised we are not going down everything has just been flat and waiting for the season to end as if there is nothing to play for. A cup run would have been perfect for us this season.

There wont be many seasons when we have such a good start that we can put everything into a cup.

[Dan]

We'll never make a cup final, we just don't try too. This year was a complete shambles, we were never going to get relegated, highly unlikely to sustain our league form and qualify for Europe, yet we still didn't seem to bothered about trying to beat QPR, even when we would have had a relatively easy 4th round game for the replay. The FA cup should have been our priority this year really when we got to the stage we were at the replay.

If we didn't try and do it this year, when will we? Of course it doesn't help we never beat premier league sides in cups. Last time we beat a premier league side in the FA cup was something like 10 games ago against Leceister in 2002. It's not like we've gone out to good premier league sides either, QPR who are appalling this year, Norwich last year.... All good chances blown because we for some reason didn't try.

[WBASPE77]

We were seconds away from winning at QPR, and the reply was a shocking game. We would have been strong favorites to beat MK Dons with a strong side out and then who knows who you get in the filth round.

[Jack Russell]

The Ipswich game really annoyed me as that was a great chance to get to the semi finals and we had a good chance to win it.

I thought you meant the Ipswich game in 1978

[WBASPE77]

That team that night was
Myhill
Cech
Pablo
Metie
Hurst
Tchoyi
Barnes
Reid
Dorrans
Fortune
Cox

Not a bad side really that was capable of beating Ipswich.

[row ww]

It was strange that performance against Ipswich.Think we had beaten Everton away 4-1 the previous game,then after Ipswich we beat Newcastle 3-1,but then went on a bad run and ended up with Hodgson in charge.

[WBASPE77]

We played this game on the Wednesday night, but we had Newcastle at home on the Sunday so surely one or two first team players could have played. Which could have been all what we needed to win the game.