FA Cup win or top four? Aston Villa fans surprisingly agree which is better

What represents success and failure in football is highly subjective and circumstantial. One club’s season to remember is another’s year to forget.

Take Manchester City, who are enduring their worst campaign for years but remain well placed to extend their top-four streak in the Premier League – 14 seasons and counting – and win another domestic trophy.

Oh, the horror, rival fans will cry, and you can just picture it now, Pep Guardiola smiling on the Wembley turf on 17 May, FA Cup in hand, revelling in a moment he may say proves talk of their downfall has been greatly exaggerated.

City are favourites to win the FA Cup. Of the remaining eight teams, they are the only side to have won this competition in the last 65 years, while four of the quarter-finalists have never done so.

For Aston Villa, the wait is 68 years. Harold Macmillan was prime minister, Stephen Fry was born, and Paul McCartney first met John Lennon the year Villa last won the FA Cup in 1957.

It was their seventh triumph, at the time a record, but one that has been comfortably passed since by Arsenal (14) and Manchester United (13), with Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur all on eight.

City’s three FA Cup wins since 2011 have moved them onto seven with Villa, who are now without a major trophy since 1996, when they won their second League Cup in three seasons.

Back then it was the Coca-Cola Cup, in those 29 years there have been as many sponsor changes in that tournament as domestic finals Villa have reached, and lost: four, on account of finishing FA Cup runners-up twice (2000 and 2015) and twice in the League Cup (2010 and 2020) as well.

Those at Villa Park below 30, and for memory’s sake, around 35, are therefore still waiting for that moment, for no-one dares count the 2001 Intertoto Cup. Only in jest will it get mentioned, while the size of the trophy – held in one hand by Paul Merson as though it was a soon-to-be regifted birthday present – perfectly represented the magnitude of this now defunct pre-season competition.

The 2019 Championship play-off final victory did at least give Villa the Wembley experience, making amends for the loss to Fulham a year prior, but what supporters truly crave is a day like Newcastle United fans sampled recently, when relief met pride for an explosion of excitement that continues into Saturday’s parade and will be talked about for decades to come.

Such scenes would not have been replicated by Liverpool based on their own recent success, and it was a reminder of what a generation of Villa fans have missed out on, and what supporters of all ages are really craving.

There was no open-top bus parade last year when fourth confirmed Champions League football, and as such many would take winning the FA Cup over reaching Europe’s premier competition again next season.

“Anyone that doesn’t choose the FA Cup is absolutely bonkers,” one supporter said when The i Paper proposed the two options.

Overall, 76 per cent of supporters voted for winning the FA Cup over finishing inside the top four (or five, assuming England get a fifth Champions League place).

“You’re not going to be telling your grandkids about that magical time under Unai Emery where we finished fourth a couple of times. We need a trophy to officially add the likes of Emery, Emiliano Martinez, Tyrone Mings, John McGinn, Ollie Watkins to the history books,” one fan said.

Another added: “Football is about glory, not playing in a premier competition. Those silhouettes of trophies throughout our history around the stadium? They need adding to. Trophies bring prestige.”

The opposing argument is focused around the nights Champions League football can deliver – beating Bayern Munich at home, for one – and the long-term sustainability Champions League football brings.

Winners of the FA Cup earn £2m, while entering the league phase of the Champions League is worth £15.5m before win or draw bonuses and further progression is even taken into account.

Villa’s run to the Champions League quarters this season is worth a further £10.4m, highlighting the substantial gap European football delivers financially over the domestic cups.

“That’s the difference between being competitive for years to come over having a good moment now,” one fan states. “So if it’s the choice, I would rather take the Champions League again and keep heading down the path we are going.”

Of course, this is hypothetical. Villa could still do both, they could even still win the Champions League, but with Paris Saint-Germain the next obstacle in the quarter-finals they are deemed rank outsiders to win that competition.

It is a pipe dream that cannot be ruled out, but the FA Cup is a far more realistic proposition. They are away to Preston in the last eight on Sunday and viewed as second favourites to go the distance behind City.

Preston, winners in 1889 and 1938, are out to write their own tale, but the door has really opened for Villa as the only Premier League side facing Championship opposition this weekend.

Not like Emery will take that for granted, however, as he targets the 12th trophy of his managerial career.

“We have to be very demanding,” Emery said on Friday. “[It] is a key moment [in] how we are going to face the last months in the competitions we have.”