As football chiefs get their snouts in the trough of the cash-spinning new Champions League, here’s what many at the top of the English game DON’T understand, writes IAN LADYMAN

One of the most discouraging conversations of the season was with a Premier League club executive about plans for a 32-team summer Club World Cup that FIFA will launch with a tournament in the United States in the summer of 2025.

Their argument was that it would be great to see the best clubs in the world play each other competitively, while I responded by saying that they already do that every season in the Champions League.

“Yes, but people can’t get enough of these games,” he said.

“They’re better than all those boring FA Cup games.”

This is where so many people in our best clubs don’t understand what’s important. They mistakenly believe that what they feel and believe in their money-saturated, cash-driven parallel universe automatically equates to what real football fans think. And it is not like that. These people are so divorced from the reality of our game that it’s pretty scary.

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This week we saw the exact details of next season’s expanded Champions League revealed. It’s quite complex and quite boring and important only to a golden few, but what it equates to is more games and more money. If you listen carefully it is possible to hear the sound of the pig’s trotters wading through the mud towards the watering hole. It doesn’t smell very good, does it?

All of which makes it perfect that FA Cup quarter-final weekend has arrived with the managers of three of our richest and most aspirational clubs absolutely desperate for a win.

Erik ten Hag, Mauricio Pochettino, Eddie Howe. How much money would you bet that all of them will continue working at Manchester United, Chelsea and Newcastle next season? Not a cent, I imagine.

Ten Hag may already be walking in the dead man’s shoes. Pochettino cannot get a regular tune-up from the players around him, while those who feel Howe is safe in the north-east probably need a quick refresher course in how sportswashing works. The Gulf States do not buy football clubs to move slowly and methodically. And they certainly don’t buy them to go backwards.

However, the FA Cup is here and suddenly offers an opportunity. Chance to make a statement with a big performance (United host Liverpool while Newcastle are at Manchester City) and a chance to reach a semi-final at Wembley and then who really knows?

And this is what so many people at the top of English football don’t understand. Great victories, trophies and medals are the most valuable currency of all.

When the whistle blew for Liverpool’s extra-time victory over Chelsea in last month’s Carabao Cup final, Pochettino looked completely devastated not only that the chance to win something in his first season with Chelsea had gone, but also because he knew very well what that meant for his team. long-term prospects at Stamford Bridge.

But now the opportunity presents itself again. Chelsea faces Leicester tomorrow for the championship. The Midlands club have succumbed to gravity since winning the 2016 Premier League, but ask their fans for the highlights of recent times and their FA Cup final victory over tomorrow’s opponents in 2021 will be a central part of its history.

The new format of the Champions League threatens to squeeze out the two English domestic cups. There is a lot of space available in the football calendar and this is another rather depressing example of the big clubs flexing their muscles in an attempt to shape the landscape to make it more attractive to them and to hell with everyone else.

The issue of Premier League handouts to the EFL is complicated, but self-interest is paramount. There are those in Premier League boardrooms who would do away with promotion and relegation and leave the top flight as a done deal.

So of course they claim they don’t care much about the FA Cup. It doesn’t even make them that much money. But out there on the grass, it does matter, whether they want to admit it or not.

Last year, Howe took Newcastle to Wembley in the Carabao Cup and lost to United. That was a big win for Ten Hag, as it bought him time with the club’s supporters and immediately made his management more credible. The same would apply now with the FA Cup. Another trophy would also help ease Jim Ratcliffe’s attempts to take United from one era to the next. The same applies to Howe and the Saudis and Pochettino and Todd Boehly’s Clearlake group.

Trophies and victories represent a big part of what sport is, but in the modern game they also serve to silence the noise. There is not much about the FA Cup that appeals to some of our big clubs as they try to nurse tired players during the scramble for post-Christmas games. That’s not the case now that spring has arrived.

The FA Cup offers hope, salvation and a chance to progress. It was always like this. Club executives obsessed with Europe, the world and all those lucrative global projects should think about that the next time they try to put their heel down his throat.

Young people benefit from new spending rules

Football’s spending rules may have put a damper on the Premier League’s quick transfer culture, but they have opened the door to our academy products. This season it has been encouraging to see Conor Bradley, Kobbie Mainoo and Lewis Miley come through.

Forest smoke on officials

Nottingham Forest manager Nuno Espirito Santo believes the referees are trying to relegate his team. “They’re trying to humiliate us,” he says.

Losing 1-0 to Liverpool and then Brighton Forest they were on the wrong side. But in football it is inevitably your own decision that counts in the end.

In January, for example, Forest were very busy in the transfer market, bringing in a much-needed goalkeeper and also two outfield players on loan right at the end of the window.

Rodrigo Ribeiro, a Portuguese striker from Sporting Lisbon, has played just one minute of league action as a substitute. Giovanni Reyna, an American midfielder from Borussia Dortmund, is also not a starter and has only played 37 more league minutes.

Portuguese super agent Jorge Mendes was involved in both deals and is also the representative of Nuno, the forestry director. Sometimes these relationships work for you and sometimes they don’t. But the fact is that Forest had a chance to improve things in January and they didn’t take it.

If they fall, the revolver will be in their own hands.

Rangnick leaves the controversial trio

Austria coach Ralf Rangnick excluded three players from his squad for participating in homophobic chants after last month’s Vienna derby.

Rapid Vienna players Marco Grüll, Guido Burgstaller and Niklas Hedl will not play in upcoming friendlies after Rangnick said: “This is something I will not tolerate.”

Austria will compete in the European Championship this summer and has a tough group. I wonder if Rangnick, who was once Manchester United’s caretaker manager, will decide he can tolerate it at that point.

Robins is a victim of snobbery.

Coventry manager Mark Robins will mark seven years in charge by taking his progressive Championship side to Wolves in the FA Cup quarter-finals.

The division’s longest-serving manager, Robins has taken Coventry from League Two to the brink of the top flight.

‘Why hasn’t Robins been offered a job in the Premier League?’ Chris Sutton asked me on this week’s Its All Kicking Off preview show podcast.

Snobbery, is the answer. Our top-flight clubs don’t want unglamorous, long-lasting products of the English training system. They say yes but it is not like that. If they did, they would hire them.

Sean Dyche, Eddie Howe, Chris Wilder, Rob Edwards. They all reached the Premier League taking lower level clubs there. If Robins wants to get there he will have to do the same.