The live games for the FA Cup 4th Round are as follows; Friday 27th January Watford v Tottenham Hotspur, 7.45pm - Live on ESPN Saturday 28th January Liverpool v Manchester United, 12.45pm - Live on ITV1 Brighton & Hove Albion or Wrexham v Newcastle United, 5.15pm - Live on ESPN Sunday 29th January Sunderland v Middlesbrough, 1.30pm - Live on ITV1 Arsenal v Aston Villa, 4pm - Live on ESPN Each club shown live will receive £123,500 from the FA. As I suspected, we aren't on live on either ITV or ESPN.
not a bad warm up game before crawley, couple of pints watching them 2 kick the **** out each other..
Not quite sure why arsenal vs aston villa game has been chosen....suppose it gives espn another chance to talk about thierry henry for 3 hours......
But when they go to Arsenal stuff like this happens [video=youtube;0ACcNOlN4rw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ACcNOlN4rw[/video]
The two tend to throw up decent fixtures in the league so why not? It's an attractive tie even if it doesn't follow the traditional cup format for picking games. Plus ESPN have so few PL games (23) a season so they will use the cup to get as many of the big teams on their channel as possible.
Thats just ESPN's 'spin' on the FA Cup I guess, they did it last season and I think its refreshing from them being in a studio elsewhere in the country, like for Premier League and SPL games. Yeah ITV and Sky both tend to do it for Champions League games before reverting to a studio for half/full time. I guess its to give the viewer more of a feel for the atmosphere and whats going on, closer look at the pitch, make you feel more like you are at the game. ESPN are reviewing their pitchside presentation though after fans were chanting remarks at Rebecca Lowe and Robbie Savage throughout the build-up to the game, and then of couse the football incident and Martin Keown's head, which Michael Brown had actually aimed at Savage. Maybe by the next round, ESPN will be back in a studio.
