The Athletic

Hello and welcome to the weekend preview on the Athletic Football Podcasts sponsored by Bet365.

I'm Dan Bardell and today, myself and co-host, George Ellick, will preview the best of the weekend's FAA Cup Action alongside Bet365, Steve Freeth.

It'd be good for you too, actually, to go through some FAA Cup action instead of Premier League, because you two get to talk about your favourite thing which is the EFL. George who's obviously an expert on the EFL and Steve whose team that he supports spend a lot of time in the EFL. Yeah, it'd be good to talk about some different things. I don't claim to be, I don't go swanning around claiming to be an expert watching their games. I actually go to the games. No tiny seat. How are we both? I'm excellent, actually. I mean, in good forms, unlike Stoke, who I've seen twice over the last few days, have been pretty average to say the least. But I was treated to Manchester City, Lester, on Boxing Day, so that was an absolute belter.

Yeah, I kind of ruined your thing on Twitter where you said, guess where this is.

Everyone was going for a northern game because it was like pie gravy, you know, like I

thinking League One, League Two or whatever, and it was, yeah, it was Manchester City.

I couldn't resist getting involved.

Yeah, FI Cup third round. I mean, Either have you got any treasured memories from the F.A. Because, you know, football fans, proper football fans, they do love the FAA Cup, don't they, George? I mean, I absolutely love it. Whenever I see fans of Premier League clubs claiming that we should abolish it and this that and the other.

I mean, in my opinion, it is the purest form of football. And for us, fans of League 1, League 2 clubs, of National League clubs and the rest, it is the

opportunity to take on the best teams, even if it doesn't end too well, which is what football's all about.

It's the promise of a one-off game where you're pitting yourself against a team who are better.

And the goals that you score against those sides are different.

They're special compared to league goals.

You know, talking of treasured memories, I think the last game I went to before COVID

was an FA Cup third round replay.

The team I support Oxford would gone up to Newcastle.

Steve Bruce's Newcastle and saw us draw nil-nill-nill at Stam's.

They came back to ours and we were 2-0 down with five minutes to go and we scored twice in the last five minutes. And it was, you know, that's not the kind of, even when he scored a last-minute winner in the league, scoring twice against a Premier League side at home under the lights, there's nothing better than that. And even though Alan Samakima did what he normally does and scored an incredible goal late on in extra time to prevent us

from penalties. Everyone left that ground knowing they'd seen a very special game and something

that is that lives long in the memory and little did we know that we wouldn't be going back

to games for about a year or so. So I love the FA Cup. I think that those, you know, it's normally

...