FA Cup has lost its magic but second tier casts a thrilling spell

Crowds, goals and entertainment of the Championship roughly equate to the old First Division of 20 years ago
Craig Bellamy Cardiff City
Craig Bellamy is one of the stars helping ensure the Championship is full of the thrills that the Premier League often lacks. Photograph: Stu Forster/Getty Images

Take a look at the Championship table and it seems clear a number of lively personalities are heading back towards the Premier League. Among others, Neil Warnock, Ken Bates and Craig Bellamy are pushing their clubs towards promotion in what is shaping up as an entertaining scrap at the top of the table. After seeing what Blackpool have achieved on the back of their unlikely elevation through the play‑offs, clubs of the size and support of Leeds and Cardiff will be eager to see if they, too, can re-establish a base camp in the big time, while if the secret of success is now to be of modest outward appearance with underrated players and a canny manager then Queens Park Rangers are perfectly placed.

Take a look at the FA Cup third-round games for a convenient preview of how this might work out. All three of the above promotion contenders are in action on Saturday, all away from home to Premier League opponents. Leeds face Arsenal in one of the most evocative of all FA Cup pairings – at least it used to be when they were in the same division, contesting the final in 1972 or playing each other four times in the same third-round tie in 1991.

QPR are at Blackburn in a match that seems to contain all the necessary ingredients for intrigue and upset. While it may not be appropriate to refer to giant-killing potential given the points totals of the two sides in their respective divisions and the wealth of the London club's various backers, a freshly installed and inexperienced manager in Steve Kean, still struggling to convince elements of his own support, would certainly be entitled to reach for the other FA Cup cliche and regard a tie against the runaway Championship leaders as a possible banana skin.

Completing the trio, Cardiff visit Stoke, a tale of two cities that could yield any result. Just recently Stoke have stopped looking like the sort of solid, stolid outfit capable of making mid-table a permanent address. During December they were found out at home by both Blackpool and Fulham, so an enterprising team such as Cardiff can at least travel with confidence.

So far, so good. Some lively FA Cup ties to look forward to, in a third round that traditionally provides a welcome break from the toil of the league. Except that this is 2011, not 1951, so don't go hunting out the wooden rattle just yet. Now that the status of the FA Cup has been diminished to something of roughly the size and importance of a passport stamp, it is necessary to ask oneself how many people will turn up to watch Blackburn v QPR. What sort of a side will Warnock send out, given that promotion is so obviously the priority? Come to that, what sort of a side will Arsène Wenger send out against Leeds, given that he made eight changes for the league game against Wigan the other night? There are no reasons for supposing that any of the managers involved will view the FA Cup games as must-win fixtures.

The fashion now is for smaller teams with something else to play for to concentrate on the daily grind rather than dreams of glory, while bigger clubs, certainly those in the Champions League bracket, habitually treat the early rounds of the FA Cup as suspiciously as a miser hosting a house party, wondering whether staying in might cost him more in the long run than going out.

The Champions League is to blame for this sorry state of affairs. Leeds provided one of the FA Cup shocks of last season with a third-round win at Old Trafford, yet it failed to resonate because Manchester United had bigger fish to fry. Or thought they had. One fears Arsenal, with Barcelona on the horizon, may feel the same way. Leeds's replayed tussle with Tottenham last season was more like an old-fashioned Cup tie, yet this season Spurs have their sights set higher.

It could be argued that the FA Cup is still a meaningful competition for the vast majority of clubs with no interest in Europe, though it rarely seems to work out that way. Top-four clubs have won every year this century bar one, and it is probably best not to dwell on the exception that was Portsmouth v Cardiff in 2008. Worse, the idea that not all teams are equally bothered about the trophy has eroded whatever indefinable magic the FA Cup used to possess. While the FA themselves had a hand in this, infamously devaluing their property by persuading the holders to withdraw in 2000, the process now takes annual hold. No one apart from the broadcasters will be pretending the tie between United and Liverpool will be of seismic significance to anyone, except perhaps Roy Hodgson.

Even most top-four meetings in the league this season have been dull, and Liverpool are a long way below that level. If it is not a vintage year for the Premier League, however, there is always the Championship, where crowds, ability, goals, competitiveness and entertainment roughly equate to First Division standards of about 20 years ago, before everything supposedly changed for the better. Catch it while you can. The top division may have lost much of its lustre to La Liga, the FA Cup is definitely in decline, but England's second tier is second to none.

Refs, like Wenger, do miss incidents

Arsène Wenger has added a new dimension to his famous myopia. He still misses incidents as he did in the past, but now he goes home, checks out the replays and complains about the refereeing to Arsenal TV. At Wigan on Wednesday the Arsenal manager was asked about the penalty his side were denied late in the game when James McArthur appeared to handle Samir Nasri's free-kick. "I honestly didn't see it," he replied.

When he did get round to watching, he concluded it was a 100% penalty and 100% identical to the one Cesc Fábregas gave away against Tottenham. Except it wasn't quite, because everyone in the ground saw that one, whereas Lee Probert missed the McArthur handball. Wigan got lucky, no question, but if Wenger can miss something, so can anyone else. Even from five yards. Until referees are allowed a second glance at a video screen, it seems unreasonable to use replays to berate them.