By John Smith (@verypopularname)

Cards on the table first of all – my team are not in the FA Cup semi-finals. Therefore I speak from a position of total objectivity when I say that this season’s FA Cup semi-final line-up is just about perfect. No, you shush.

Hear me out on this. We are left with four good Premier League teams, all with a chance of winning it, and for whom carrying off the trophy would mean a lot. In an era when the vast majority of fans think that the shine has gone from the cup and the competition has lost some of its magic, this could be the shot in the arm it needs.

Accepting that there is inevitably going to be one of the top six in there, it may as well be Man City, right? Yes, they win a lot of trophies in their current incarnation but you can’t deny that they do it with style, and we all like watching them really, don’t we? Besides which, they haven’t won this one since 2011, so we might be due seeing Vincent Kompany’sdelighted little baby face with the cup held above it once more. On top of that, it might just be historic this season. With the EFL Cup already in the Etihad Airways executive flight bag, the blue half of Manchester are still (at time of writing), in the hunt for an unprecedented quadruple.

When Manchester United won their treble in 1999, it gave their FA Cup final win over Newcastle an extra significance. What would otherwise have been a routine and perfunctory 2-0 win on the day, was given an edge by being the middle step on their way to their greatest of all seasons. If City beat Brighton, then Watford or Wolves in the final, it could be memorable for similar reasons – only one louder.

I think I just want the cup to mean something to the winners again and in recent years that has demonstrably not been the case. Arsenal went through a purple patch of three wins in four years. That’s success by anyone’s standards, but it was never enough to keep the Arsenal Fan TV gang off of poor old Arsene Wenger’s back. They never seemed to treat it like a proper trophy. When Manchester United won it in 2016 beating a dancing-Pardew inspired Crystal Palace, they promptly sacked Louis van Gaal; Chelsea did the same last year, with Antonio Conte striding victorious up the Wembley steps and straight out of the exit door.

You have to go back to relegated Wigan upsetting City in 2013 to find somebody that seemed to genuinely think quite a lot of winning it. And believe me, it meant more to chairman Dave Whelan than anyone. He broke his leg in a cup final once you know – he perhaps should have mentioned it. Granted, their own manager, Roberto Martinez, also soon skipped away from the club, but that was onwards and upwards rather than being cast aside. I think I can say with confidence that whoever wins it this year, none of Guardiola, Hughton, Gracia or Nuno Espirito Santo (always enjoyable saying that one in full), will lose their jobs as a result of what goes on at Wembley in May. Managers shouldn’t be sacked for winning the FA Cup. It’s not a good look for the club or the competition.

Mention of the other three managers brings home to me, that in these heightened, polarised, tribal times, where everything is black and white and love or hate, all three men seem profoundly alright and inoffensive. Speaking personally, I wouldn’t begrudge any one of them a trophy, nor come to that, would I begrudge their clubs.

Brighton have done nothing to harm you, and unless you’re a Crystal Palace fan, you probably wish them well. It’s not so long ago that they lost their ground and had to play at an athletics track for a number of years, for goodness sake. They’ve come through that and deserve their fancy new stadium, their Premier League spotlight, and who knows, maybe the FA Cup too. Since 1983 they’ve had to live with being the butt of ‘And Smith Must Score’ jokes and maybe this time Glenn Murray or somebody else can inspire a more emphatic commentary line.

Wolves will have more detractors because of their financial situation, their closer proximity to more geographical rivals, and because deep down we all think their kit should be a bit more orange this year. But for all that, they would do for me in a Cup Final. Players like Neves and Moutinho are a joy to watch and they’ve had a great season, with just the right number of clown car results along the way to suggest that anything could happen in their semi-final.

Jota after scoring Wolves’ second against United. (Credit: Goal.com)

And then we come to Watford – the true enigma of the season. We are awash with experts and pundits on our saturation TV coverage, and yet I haven’t heard any one of them satisfactorily explain why Watford have done as well as they have. And what’s more, there seems to be a reluctance to try to analyse it. They have a manager that most people didn’t expect to last as long as he has, and a squad full of players that many of us hadn’t heard much of before they signed if we’re honest, and whatever it is they are cooking up between them at Vicarage Road, they are doing something right.

It’s as if all the pundits think it’s not worth bothering to find out what’s working, because they all expect the wheels to come off at some point. Well there’s currently no sign of that, and they look well placed to finish as best of us of the rest of us this season. Troy Deeney remains their figurehead, and he can be a polarising figure, but again, unless you are a fan of their most bitter rivals (who even is that? Luton?), who among us would be against seeing them run out in the Wembley sunshine for the final?

It’s also fair to say that none of the three squads are overly familiar to us. In the glory days of all-day cup final coverage (usually interspersed with wrestling if you’re old enough, and were doing the right thing and watching Brian Moore on ITV) these teams would have been subject to a VT where the team joker introduced the rest of the squad and told us a bit about them, before we rode along with them on the coach to Wembley. I for one would gladly watch this time around if I got to find out the nicknames, eating habits or favoured karaoke song of the likes of Adrian Mariappa, Conor Coady or Bruno.

I know that maybe we’re missing a little of the romance of a club from the Championship or lower at the semi-final stage but that seldom ends well, and history tells us they would have little chance of winning it. The last Championship side to make a final was Cardiff, who lost to Harry ‘Jam RolyPoly’ Redknapp’s Portsmouth in 2008, and if you can tell me anything that happened in that dull final bar the unsatisfying scooped winning goal from Kanu, well, you’re better than I am.

Wigan’s win should rightly be revered more than Wimbledon’s famous toppling of Liverpool in 1988, as a bigger upset and a more dramatic finish, but it’s a shining beacon in a sea of otherwise mediocre cup finals and predictable wins stretching back for some time now. This year could be different, given the sides that are still in it.

So let’s all get behind it and enjoy ourselves with what remains of this year’s competition. There’s romance and fairy tales and genuine, surprising joy in there for somebody, just waiting to be written. Magic to be woven. Legends to be made.

Well at least until Man City win it 1-0 with a penalty and we all go back to normal.

John Smith is co-Author of ‘Booked! The Gospel According To Our Football Heroes’.