I don't know about you but over the last few days (and I write this on the morning before the Old Trafford game) I've begun to grow a bit tired of the usual media comment on the importance of the FA cup. You can already see their pens being drawn in anticipation of an Arsenal exit as they prepare to write the latest hysterical story about how Arsenal have traduced the tradition and standing of the competition by fielding a weakened team.

Let's be clear about this. Arsenal is a business which has to stand or fall on its own merits. Without any help from the football authorities, it has succeeded in building a state of the art stadium as close to the centre of London as it is possible to get while at the same time maintaining tremendously high standards of football. As a result of this, the club has incurred a large amount of debt which needs to be financed. The club therefore will naturally look to the best means of drawing in revenue to fund the debt and ongoing team development. Of the three competitions in which we remain involved, the FA Cup is the one which delivers least bang for buck.

The upcoming Milan and Birmingham games are of far greater importance. Beating Milan will ensure a greater share of the Champions League money as well as helping to push us up the UEFA ratings in terms of assuring a seeding in next years competition. Beating Birmingham next week will help maintain the gap between us and the two Surrey-based clubs directly behind us in the league.

On the other hand, winning against Man U will provide us with an extra cup tie adding to an already congested fixture list, probably to be played against another bunch of Northern sh*tkickers whose manager will have been schooled by the FA coaching system to train his players to run around for 90 minutes in an attempt to - to use the media euphemism - "get in our faces".

Where is the upside for Arsenal? The few thousand Gooners good and true who make the journey to Manchester will be out of pocket but for the rest of us, what will we have we lost? We'll suffer the indignity of the aforementioned Surreyites digging us out on Monday. Big deal. Live with it and move on.

And what of the "tradition" of the FA Cup. That will be the competition which the FA allowed Man U to not enter a few years back, allegedly as part of a World Cup bid. Good to see that the plan worked, isn't it?

That will be the competition where the prize for having gone through all the hoops to get to the final, is to be allocated 20,000 tickets out of a potential 90,000 in order to accommodate the "Football Family"- in reality, the regional FAs and other such ineffectual organisations that will be given tickets which they will then sell on to touts eventually finding their way into genuine supporters hands for hugely inflated prices. Why, in an age where demand for tickets from genuine supporters is higher than ever, should this institutionalised corruption be tolerated?

And let's be honest, having fought your way to Wembley via the creaking transport infrastructure, you will be greeted with overpriced, low quality beer and food and sit next to some corporate Johnny who's only there because his firm couldn't get tickets to the Twickenham Sevens. You will then suffer an even worse journey home after standing outside Wembley Park tube for an hour. Now I know Paris the other year wasn't terribly pleasant at times as far as the transport went but at least that's a genuine day out. And let's face it, you expect rudeness and poor service from the French. Why pay good money to suffer it on your doorstep?

And what of our duty to support the FA?

That will be the FA which in '91 decided that we were twice as culpable an Man U following the handbags at Old Trafford and deducted us two points to their one. Nice try chaps but we told you where you could stick your effing two points as we picked up the league trophy that year.

That will be the FA which last year upheld the ban on Adebayor for not hitting Frank Lumpard in the Pointless Cup final. Despite video evidence showing that he did nothing.

No, I don't buy it that we owe anything to the FA at all. Until the powers that be in our game actually start to offer leadership and cease acting like stuffed shirts whose only purpose is to ride the gravy train, we owe it to ourselves to put Arsenal first.