Manufacturing magic: What exactly is it we want from the FA Cup?

This reduction of football to a set of prescribed emotions was, this year, stretched over four days of manufactured pre-match magic. The industrialisation of the Cup's anticipatory appeal was laid bare across five televised ties (with another, Wolves vs Liverpool, to come tonight), but the domestic broadcasters were only the tip of the iceberg.

It is the relentless, near-mindless flogging of the FA Cup’s brand that has, ironically enough, turned it into A Brand. And it’s worked a treat, in one sense: two years ago, the FA struck a $1bn deal for the Cup's overseas TV rights, an astonishing six-year agreement to ensure that eager fans, from Rotterdam to Riyadh to Rabat, were able to watch Brentford 1 Oxford United 0.

Deconstructing the billion-dollar magic™ of the world's oldest cup competition is not a difficult job: essentially, it boils down to the latent threat of smaller clubs beating big clubs (although, ideally, not the one you support), thus producing the evergreen spectacle of the Cup Upset.

At the same time, managers of mid-table Premier League sides find themselves - not unreasonably - questioned for fielding second-string line-ups, tearing at the respectful fabric of the competition's history. Of course, that lack of top-flight commitment does, in theory, lend itself to more Cup upsets, a magical paradox that serves only to further muddle the competition's modern identity crisis.

From this has been born the achingly vague sentiment of “anything can happen”, which - despite its obvious intent - still inadvertently admits that "anything" could include Tottenham and Manchester City sticking a vidiprinter-threshold-breaking S-E-V-E-N past Tranmere and Rotherham respectively.

Or a goalless draw between Sheffield Wednesday and Luton. Or a Chris Wood penalty deciding matters between Burnley and Barnsley at Turf Moor, surely the least magical thing football has ever conjured up.

We have no right to expect this magic from the FA Cup - indeed, that unpredictability is surely inherent to its remaining charm - just as we have no right to expect that the suffocating pressure of, say, a Championship play-off final should produce an entertaining, seven-goal thriller of a game of football.

But the idea of simply letting the FA Cup be the FA Cup - even if that means a routine 2-0 win for Chelsea in the third round for the 103rd year in a row - is apparently not enough to satisfy the tired old bluster and habitual mythologising.

In an effort to generate as much hypothetical romance as possible, foreign players and managers are subject to their customary pre-Cup-tie grilling to ensure they know What It Means (cannier responses will include stories of huddling round the nearest TV to watch the Cup final back in 1988 or something, to placate the romanticists).

Meanwhile, lower league clubs, players, managers, chairmen, groundsmen and fans are gently patronised as they fulfil their roles as FA Cup furniture.

Quite rightly, the magic of the FA Cup is subject to the luck of the draw: not every third round will dangle the potential banana skin of a Newport vs Leicester. Indeed, the fourth round might not give the broadcasters anything to stick their cliches into, but - once again - we do not deserve to have magic served up on a plate.

Perhaps, if we stop banging on about it, the magic - whatever that is - will keep coming. Division-defying upsets will still happen without BT Sport and the BBC earnestly crossing their broadcasting fingers in the build-up.

Or maybe it won’t, in which case the 138th staging of The Football Association Challenge Cup will be completed, and we’ll look ahead to the 139th - brains reset - to bang on about it once more.