Pompey manager Frank Burrows got it right 42 years ago – why do we have to concentrate on the league all the time? – Simon Carter

‘I don’t agree. Winning is the thing that matters most - it is a lovely habit which no team can have too much of.

‘We’re going hard for promotion and I want to see us going hard in the FA Cup as well. My only regret is that we’re not going just as well in the League Cup.’

A Pompey manager once wrote those words as part of his programme notes. No, they didn’t come from Danny Cowley this season. Nor were they ever penned by Kenny Jackett, or Harry Redknapp for that matter.

No, they were written by Frank Burrows, the ex-Fratton Park boss who sadly passed away recently aged 77, in his ‘Frank Talking’ column on the day Pompey hosted Newport County in an FA Cup first round tie in November 1979.

A different world back then, obviously. Margaret Thatcher had been Prime Minister for just a few months, Pink Floyd would soon have the Christmas No 1, the average house price was around £19,800, and the FA Cup mattered.

It mattered to every club, whether you were a top flight club like Liverpool or Manchester United or a Fourth Division club like … well, like Pompey were at the time. It mattered to a Liverpool player as much as it mattered to a non-league journeyman. It mattered to all supporters, and it mattered to all managers. It certainly mattered to Frank Burrows, and I can’t believe many Pompey fans at the time would have disagreed with him.

No more, sadly. And if you needed any further evidence - in fairness, you probably didn’t - just take a look at some of the comments that followed Pompey’s home loss to Harrogate at the weekend. Inevitably, ‘now we can concentrate on the league’ was the old chestnut regurgitated regularly. ‘Not really bothered about the cup’ one Blues fan posted on social media. ‘I’m glad we are out’ stated another.

‘Now we can concentrate on the league’. I love that phrase; as if every team who gets dumped out of a cup will magically start to go on a stunning run of league form ending in promotion …

I’ll be honest here: I was gutted when my club, Exeter, conceded a late goal to crash out of the cup at Cambridge last weekend. Absolutely gutted. I’m gutted every year we go out, whether it’s against Manchester United (2005) or Liverpool (2016) or Bognor Regis (1988) or Curzon Ashton (2008).

As I write, Exeter are fourth in our league. In with a chance of promotion, you’d have to say. More of a chance, arguably, than Pompey. Yet there was no way the words ‘now we can concentrate on the league’ were ever going to tumble out of my mouth.

I wanted my club to still be in the FA Cup, to be in the third round draw with a chance to play a Premier League club’s academy XI (call me cynical, but you know I’m right).

In the same way, I want Exeter to beat Pompey in the EFL Trophy just before Christmas. Not so I can taunt anyone I know who follows Pompey, but because it would take us a step closer to a Wembley final. And those don’t come along every year.

So what if it’s the Papa John’s Trophy final? That’s not sniggering I hear from any Fratton Park regulars, is it? This is the same tournament that saw Pompey and Sunderland nearly sell out Wembley for the 2018/19 final, lest we forget.

It’s the same tournament where Wolves and Burnley attracted over 80,000 at the old Wembley in 1988. Those clubs might be milking Murdoch’s cash cow right now, but back then they were both in the fourth tier. I know Wolves fans who still cherish that day out 33 years ago as much as any Premier League win since.

When I worked in Southampton, I remember Saints fans scoffing at the EFL Trophy. Yet they were among the first to ensure they had a ticket when their club reached the 2009/10 final.

And anyway, why do we HAVE to concentrate on just the league? Good teams, good squads, good managers, can juggle the demands of different competitions.

Take Danny Cowley, for example; back in 2016/17 he was national box office material for guiding Lincoln City to the quarter finals of the FA Cup, the first non-league club in over a century to reach the last eight. Yet the Red Imps still won the National League title. A great cup run didn’t get in the way of the number one ambition.

Same with MK Dons in 2007/08 and Bristol City in 2014/15. Both clubs won a league title - the former League 2, the latter League 1 - and lifted the EFL Trophy in the same season. And look at Barnsley, who in 2015/16 won the EFL Trophy and a few months later were back at Wembley to clinch promotion via the League 1 play-off final.

Those achievements are rare, of course they are, but it shows what can be done. It can only be done, though, if the squad is good enough. If it’s not, then no end of ‘now we can concentrate on the league’ is going to provide a happy ending.

Thankfully, there was a happy ending for Frank Burrows in 1979/80 - a fairly memorable FA Cup run AND promotion. See, the two have always been compatible.

After beating Newport 1-0, Pompey were drawn against higher tier Wimbledon. After a 0-0 draw at Plough Lane, the replay was, incredibly, held at Fratton Park ON CHRISTMAS EVE with a 7.30pm (remember those?) kick off. Imagine that now. Impressively, over 17,000 watched another draw, this time 3-3.

No pesky, time-saving penalty shoot-outs back then, of course, so it was back to Wimbledon on the first Saturday of the 1980s for a second replay (after Pompey had also played on December 26, December 29 and January 1 in the league). On third round day, Burrows’ men eventually won their second round tie 1-0.

The prize - a home tie against then top flight Middlesbrough under the Fratton Park lights just four days later. A huge crowd of 31,743 - this for a Fourth Division club, remember - turned out to watch a 1-1 draw. No doubt Boro would have fielded their strongest team. No pesky squad rotations, denying lower tier fans the chance to watch the household names, back then either.

I am not a Pompey fan, but how I would have loved to have been at that game. A ‘David v Goliath’ FA Cup tie - if only in terms of league positions, as I agree Pompey have the greater history - with packed terraces and a wonderful atmosphere under the glare of the lights. Football, for me, doesn’t get any better than that.

For me, it doesn’t get any better - has never got any better, and probably will never get any better - than on February 18, 1981. There I was, aged 12, part of a crowd of over 17,000 at Exeter to watch us beat Newcastle United 4-0 in an FA Cup fifth round replay. If I close my eyes I can still picture being there. I have spent the last 40 years yearning for another night like that one. It might never happen, but I have to dream.

Had we beaten Cambridge last weekend, our reward would have been a trip to Newcastle in the third round, the first time we’d have played the Magpies since that day so very long ago. Some Pompey fans seem quite happy, delighted in fact, they were spared a shortish (and winnable) third round trip to Kenilworth Road, while I’d have relished a huge trek to the north east and a three-division gap to try and bridge. What does that say about me?

Playing Newcastle in the FA Cup would have been good, but it wouldn’t have been as good as 41 years ago because the FA Cup has changed. Football has changed, society has changed. A lot of it for the better, but not all of it, not where the Football Association Challenge Cup, (still) the greatest club knockout tournament in world sport, is concerned.

Fourth tier clubs, even the biggest ones, don’t get 17,000 for an FA Cup second round tie on any day of the year now, let alone Christmas Eve.

Back in 1979/80, fourth tier Halifax beat top flight Manchester City in the third round on a fantastically muddy pitch. Imagine, also, that now. Video footage is available on YouTube and provides an evocative portal into how football used to be. Before money replaced romance, before managers stopped writing notes like the late Frank Burrows once did, and before fans wanted to concentrate on the league all the time.