FA Cup fifth round: 10 things to look out for this weekend - two

6)Replays should stay

With Arsenal, Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea all still fighting on three fronts (and in City’s case, four), there has been the now annual spate of brow-furrowing and chin-rubbing over fixture congestion this week, with the axing of FA Cup replays being discussed in the upper echelons of the Football Association and the Premier League. The prestige and aura of the FA Cup has been eroded so much over recent years (Wembley semi-finals, the 5.30pm kick-off time for the final, ‘The Emirates FA Cup’) that it needs support, not diminishing further. Smaller clubs handed away draws at the big boys need the carrot of a replay. So suck it up, Premier League. Replays need to stay .

7)Hull also have priorities elsewhere

They’ve got a title tilt to worry about, a big midweek game looming and a chock-a-block fixture list to contend with, so you wouldn’t blame them if they took their eye of the ball here and concentrated on the bigger fish they have to fry in the future. Yes, the trip to Arsenal is one Hull City could probably do without. They’retop of the Championship but no more than the current leaders of what could turn out to be a six-horse race for the top two. They have to go to play-off chasing Ipswich on Tuesday and, even without a Cup replay, they don’t have a midweek off until the end of March. Steve Bruce has promised “wholesale changes”. Arsenal, of course, are in a very similar boat, with Barcelona looming next week and the Premier League title battle on a knife-edge. Even though the Gunners are looking to become the first team since the 19th century to win the FA Cup three years on the bounce (Blackburn Rovers were the last, in 1884, 1885 and 1886) you sense the competition is low on their priority list. But if neither side is firing on all cylinders, you’d still expect a home win at the Emirates

8)Watford to continue to see off the old guard

Watford have only reached the FA Cup’s fifth round in one of the last seven seasons, but then in six of the last seven seasons their interest in the competition has been ended either by Chelsea (three times, 3-0, 5-0, 3-1), Manchester City (twice, 4-2, 3-0) or Tottenham (once, 1-0). They were, in other words, repeatedly drawn against some of the country’s finest teams, who emphatically reminded them of their superiority. This season has so far offered them a very different and considerably more pleasurable experience: they have been repeatedly drawn against some of the country’s bigger clubs – boasting between them eight league titles, and representing combined populations over 20 times larger than Watford’s – and so far have gently reminded them of their inferiority. Neither Newcastle United nor Nottingham Forest were exactly outclassed – Steve McClaren’s side should have won at Vicarage Road in round three, while it took an 89th-minute Odion Ighalo winner to squeeze past Forest – yet both were beaten 1-0, with Leeds United up next. In September, before Watford’s visit to St James’ Park, the venerable, 75-year-old Newcastle Chronicle football writer John Gibson wrote that “Watford are pygmies living in a land of giants” and that “clubs like Newcastle, with 50,000 fans bellowing them on, ought to sweep them contemptuously aside”. For better or for worse it is no longer possible to assume an easy correlation between a team’s support base and their likelihood of success in English football, as Watford will hope to prove once again on Saturday. Though with Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham all still in the competition – even if at least one of the three must go out this weekend – they should probably hold off on booking the late-May open-top bus tour for a while yet.

9)Recuperated Palace to rediscover their zip, zing and sparkle?

Tottenham and Crystal Palace have both been travelling this week. For Spurs, there was a Europa League game in Florence on Thursday, while Palace headed to Spain for a training camp in Barcelona. Despite the short-haul flying there should be no issue with freshness in their ranks, given how little football many of the Palace players have played of late: Dwight Gayle has missed two months with a hamstring problem, while Joe Ledley has been absent for the last three league games with a calf complaint. When Yannick Bolasie last appeared in December, Palace were sixth and had accumulated on average 1.7 points per league game – they have drawn three and lost six of nine league matches since, running at 0.3 points each. Bakary Sako, whose two hamstring injuries have restricted him to a single appearance in the club’s last 13 league games – plus half an hour as a substitute in the third round of the Cup – has been sharing a mobile cryotherapy chamber with Bolasie in an effort to speed his recovery. All could be in the squad this weekend. It is just a few weeks since these teams last played, when Palace had three shots on target to Tottenham’s 11, three corners to their opponents’ 10, and needed Spurs to score their goal for them in a 3-1 defeat. With this collective flight from the treatment table, coupled with Adebayor’s recruitment, a sudden return to the zip, zing and sparkle that characterised Palace’s early-season successes – particularly away from home – should be on the cards. Given their recent travails, and the fact that the visit to White Hart Lane is the first of three successive away games, it’s probably just as well.

10)Royals could spring a surprise

Looking for a shock? Reading could be the team to provide one. There are plenty of portents: West Brom have had six visits to the Madejski Stadium and never won; in fact they haven’t won on their last 10 away trips to Reading, they’ve have been past this stage of the competition only three times since 1981-82; and they’re not in great form – they had gone five games without a win before their smash-and-grab win over Everton last weekend. And the Royals have put their league woes behind them in the Cup this season, battering Huddersfield 5-2 in the third round and Walsall 4-0 in the fourth. “You can say that there is no pressure on us as an underdog but there is,” said the Reading captain Paul McShane. “We’ve got to put pressure on ourselves. We’ve got to win the game, it’s as simple as that.”