Molineux memories

There is a calming domestic languor about new year sport. Pleasant. Like things used t’be. Olde tyme talk is of minnows and giant-slayers and the ‘magic’ of the Cup, and this weekend’s FA Cup third-round matches are bound to provide — as they have been doing for a century and beyond — a few memorable little asterisks on provincial calendars. Like it or lump it, the big-time Premiership dandies have to revert to their muddy roots. The European swanks of Italy and Spain have shut up shop for the January snows, but their handful of strutting English counterparts have to knuckle down, get their knees dirty in parochial challenge, and give no thought to further Continental adventures till the knockout rounds of the Champions’ League begin again next month. By which time, a great deal can happen to form, flow and fitness. The expensively assembled strutters of Chelsea qualified for the Champions’ League — they play the favourites Barcelona in the last week of February — with a minimum of fuss, their London rivals Arsenal with (as ever abroad) a maximum of fuss. Manchester United purred through comfortably in spite of some teetering defensive insecurities. Liverpool made perspiringly hard work of qualification, although in Steven Gerrard — oomph, nerve, verve and unbothered blunt-scissored haircut — they have, on his day, the most thrillingly versatile and dynamic English player on the scene.

Old-timers will enjoy the FA Cup for, well, old times’ sake. No longer does it mean much in the general scheme. We shall even know the FA Cup quarter-finalists by the time the Champions’ League resumes. Europe is where the real business is done these days; and business is business. For this reason I was surprised that a notable half-century anniversary was allowed to pass just before Christmas with scarcely a peep of remembrance to celebrate the precise 50 years since an English club took on the foreigners for the first time.