Here we go again. Stop smoking. Stop eating junk food. Learn a foreign language.
It is that time of year when people make resolutions. Always with the best of intentions. Usually with little chance of keeping them.
Well, here is one which Premier League football clubs should ignore at their peril. Start respecting the FA Cup.
Start respecting the competition whose history goes back to 1872 when the Wanderers beat the Royal Engineers 1-0 at Kennington Oval and launched a source of triumph and tears which has been eclipsed rarely in the whole of sport.
Let the respect start this weekend.
By Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez sending his strongest team to Preston, who won the trophy for the first time back in 1889.
By Sir Alex Ferguson doing the same when his Manchester United side travel to Southampton on Sunday for a replay of the 1976 final, when the memories will be of the late Bobby Stokes bursting through to score the only goal for a result which still ranks as one of the biggest shocks in FA Cup history.
The 'big four' have not covered themselves in glory in recent years where the FA Cup is concerned.
Yes, they have won it. Seventeen times between them in the last 20 years, with only Portsmouth, Everton and Tottenham breaking their stranglehold in that time.
Yet they have approached it with a pragmatic, business head. Rarely have they embraced the romance which is the lifeblood of the competition. The FA Cup thrives on witnessing the £100,000-a-week superstars of the sport mixing it with the part-time plumbers, taxi drivers and double-glazing salesmen who invariably inhabit the early rounds.
Too often the big clubs see that as an opportunity to rest their top stars for more lucrative assignments in the Premier League and Champions League. None more so than Manchester United, whose absence from the competition in 2000 with the Football Association's approval, in favour of the World Club Championship, marked a nadir for the men who rule the English game.
The fact, however, is that we remember the giant-killing heroics of Hereford, Sutton, Kingstonian, Sunderland, Wycombe, Wimbledon and the rest because they were authentic humblings of the best that English football had to throw at them.
There is no better way to dampen footballing romance than seeing a small club's big day spoiled by the apparent indifference of high and mighty opposition.
So let's hope that this weekend a committed Everton are given a fright at Macclesfield and a high-flying Aston Villa are rattled at Gillingham.
As for Blackburn, who won a special FA Cup trophy in 1886 to mark a hat-trick of wins, let's hope their trip to Blyth Spartans of the Conference North promotes everything that was once so compelling about football's oldest knockout competition.
Nothing against Blackburn, but come on you Blyth! The FA Cup needs you.
© 2008 Sporting Life UK Ltd, All Rights Reserved.
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