I see there's other stuff too.
- 5th round no longer midweek
- FA Cup exclusive windows from the 4th-6th round with no PL matches taking place at the same time
- £33m extra to grassroots football
The FA are saying it's strengthening the position of the cup, not sure I'd agree with that.
I like replays for the smaller teams, can be financially huge for them as others have said. It's not like top teams don't often field squad players in these games anyway a lot of the time so I'll be sad to see the replays go.
I'm glad the 5th round is moving back to weekends, made it feel like the League Cup when it was midweek. Mind you, "weekends" has a funny definition for the FA. 4th round weekend will now be from Friday to Wednesday.
Not sure why they're scrapping the replays in the 1st and 2nd rounds after speaking with the Premier League when PL clubs aren't even in it at that stage. A 5th tier or lower team earning a replay against a bigger League One club in front of 15,000 people could still be very nice for then financially.
Used to love replays in general as a kid, but back then the FA Cup was much more important. I remember us having two replays against QPR in the late 80s and listening to 1st replay on the radio. Deiniol Graham scored to make it 2-1 in extra time in the first replay and I was going mental jumping up and down on my bed only for QPR to equalise. Beat them easily in the 2nd replay after getting Bryan Robson and a few back from injury, think that was 88/89. Couldn't have that now of course, but the cup was so important it didn't matter how many matches had to be played. Fans and players just wanted to still be in it no matter what.
When it was more important a first match and a replay or two could be great if two rivals played each other, not just for the smaller teams. Was also the sort of thing that could create rivalries.