There is not a lot to gain as a Premier League behemoth when playing a plucky lower-league outfit in the FA Cup early rounds – but, as demonstrated by Crystal Palace on Saturday, there is an awful lot to lose.
Had the Reds done what Manchester City, for example, did at the weekend and wiped the floor with their EFL visitors then the verdicts would all be ‘well, it’s only Barnsley’. Yet if they had lost, as Oliver Glasner’s holders did, the negativity would reach deafening noise levels.