No questions.....just a read for anyone that fancies it... David Moyes has been Everton manager for 10 years and has still never won a game at Anfield, so the heaviness of his heart as he made six changes to the team that beat Tottenham at the weekend can only be imagined. Even Everton's strongest side was only just good enough to survive a second-half onslaught from Spurs, and whatever team Moyes picked would have gone to Liverpool as underdogs, though after spending the weekend in a shower of praise in which he was constantly reminded that Everton could mark his 10th anniversary by going above their neighbours and rivals in the table it must have been a tough task to weigh up the priorities and retain a sense of perspective. One assumes that Everton will be at full strength and bristling with aggression when they face Sunderland in the FA Cup on Saturday, and they will probably need to be. Sunderland are right alongside Everton in the league table, and they too were poised to overtake Liverpool until Steven Gerrard's hat-trick opened a five-point gap. There are no guarantees, in other words, that Everton will have an easier fixture against Martin O'Neill's team than their last two against Liverpool and Spurs. The reason for Moyes becoming one of the very few managers this century to prioritise the FA Cup over league commitments is simply that a prize is on offer in the Cup, and Everton stand one game away from a semi-final at Wembley. Going above Liverpool in the league would doubtless have been fun for a couple of days and nights, but Moyes is after a more solid achievement than that. With both Manchester teams out of the last eight, the Everton manager probably feels that with a bit of luck and a decent draw the final at least might be a possibility. O'Neill will feel exactly the same way, and so too, quite rightly, will Harry Redknapp, Kenny Dalglish, Tony Pulis and Roberto Di Matteo. Owen Coyle will not be getting carried away yet with a tough away draw at Spurs to negotiate, and may have mixed feelings about reaching another FA Cup semi after what happened last season, but with even Nigel Pearson and Leicester probably feeling that this is as good a time as any to play Chelsea the Cup is full of intriguing possibilities once again. This is how it should be, because this is how it used to be. Never mind for the moment that the relative lack of Champions League distractions does not reflect too well on the state of English football right now â I hope all the people who told me that it was silly to suggest Bayern Munich were any better than Manchester United noted the result against Basel on Tuesday night â the FA Cup deserves a bit of time and attention to itself. It has been compromised too often in recent seasons by the calendar clash between its closing stages and those of the Champions League, leading to clubs sending out weakened sides, mismatches in finals, Manchester United virtually failing to turn up for their semi-final against Everton in 2009 and the general feeling that the days when winning the FA Cup mattered to anyone belong to the era of wooden rattles and Pathe News clips. A personal theory has long been that the reason the Carling Cup is now better-loved than it used to be, taken seriously by almost everyone and with its prestige gradually rising as a result, is that it has mid-season to itself. Usefully out of the way before the Champions League restarts, the Carling Cup doesn't clash with anything and offers an adventure for smaller sides and an insurance policy against finishing the season empty-handed for bigger ones. A few years ago, when the FA Cup's decline appeared so chronic that suggestions were being sought as to how it might be revived, one of the more sensible ideas was simply to move it to a different part of the season. In all probablity that would have involved muscling in on the Carling Cup, which might have been a little unfair, but the point was that the FA Cup was never going to win a popularity contest with the Champions League. The Champions League might be the new kid on the block, at least in terms of its present format with the four best English teams starting out in it each season, but as long as English teams are involved in the later stages the FA Cup is always going to be a secondary consideration. This season there is no need to move the FA Cup because English teams have moved out of the Champions League instead. That may not be an ideal situation, but it does allow the FA Cup a bit of breathing space, particularly as Manchester City, Manchester United and Arsenal have already gone out of the competition to Premier League rivals. That leaves a last eight rich in clubs who, in the dreadful modern parlance, are not going to win anything else. Certainly you will not be able to tell Everton, Liverpool, Sunderland or Stoke fans this weekend that the FA Cup is unimportant. Tottenham fans may possibly feel they could set their sights higher, but if this is to be Redknapp's final season at White Hart Lane you can bet he would like to go out on a Wembley high. Bolton and Leicester, away to Spurs and Chelsea respectively, are likely to travel more in hope than expectation, but the Cup will always have a place for underdogs and few supporters will ever mind being 90 minutes away from Wembley. Only Chelsea, arguably, can afford to look down on the FA Cup, and even then maybe not for long. It would of course be completely daft to suggest that Di Matteo could use the FA Cup as a chance to impress Chelsea's owners and keep his present job for longer than a few months. That might happen at many other clubs but it is not going to happen at Chelsea. Roman Abramovich only has eyes for one competition and it isn't the FA Cup. But that doesn't mean everyone else has to feel the same way. If we are no longer at Europe's top table let us make the best of what we do have. With all respect to Everton, Sunderland and everyone else in the quarter-finals the standard of football will not be as good as the Champions League, but at least the competition might be a tad more unpredictable. It is difficult even at this stage to work out who might reach the final, let alone who might win it, and that is not something that can be said of the Champions League. English teams cannot beat Barcelona in any case, but they have been known to put up a good fight against each other
