Andrew Fifield On the Premiership: Relegation battles have many potential turning points, but even though there are still six weeks of the season remaining, West Bromwich Albion and Birmingham City may come to view 2pm on Saturday, March 18th, as the moment their fate was sealed.
That was the time Alan Pardew handed in his West Ham team-sheet for the game with Portsmouth. That piece of A4 showed six changes to the side which had progressed to tonight's English FA Cup quarter-final against Manchester City three days previously, and handed Pompey - a side who appeared relegated in all but name two weeks ago - the timeliest of lifts. While Harry Redknapp's side waltzed to a 4-2 win, Birmingham and West Brom slumped to morale-sapping defeats. It had the feeling of a pivotal weekend.
Pardew made no apology for his decision to rest his key players with the trip to Eastlands in mind, even if it did push two of his managerial peers closer to the sack. The Hammers' combative coach is not the sort of character who invites, or expects, sympathy, but in this instance he has been poorly served by the body who like to portray themselves as guardians of the game's welfare.
The English Football Association's slavish devotion to the over-paid and over-rated England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson has backed them into a corner. Last summer, they agreed to Eriksson's request for an extra week to prepare for the World Cup at the cost of shoe-horning the cup quarter-finals into unfamiliar midweek slots. The result? A clutch of furious clubs, a devalued cup competition and one happy Swede.
It is a palpably absurd situation. This was meant to be the season for the FA to catapult their beloved knockout tournament back into the national consciousness but instead their crass decision-making has left the old jug looking more battered than ever. There is simply no justification for scheduling an FA cup quarter-final - one of the season's showpiece events - on a Monday evening, particularly when both City and West Ham have been involved in league fixtures just 48 hours previously.
It is not just incompetent organisation on the part of the FA, it is also grossly unfair on Pardew and City's Stuart Pearce.
The latter found himself in a slightly less volatile situation as his side's meeting with Wigan on Saturday meant little in the grand scheme of the season, but Pardew was left in the impossible position of trying to appease both his own supporters, who had paid good money to watch their first-choice side compete with Portsmouth, while following his managerial gut instinct which told him to preserve his team for the cup, which now represents the limit of West Ham's ambitions this season.
Perhaps the only person who saw nothing wrong in the whole shabby business was Redknapp, who did well to keep a straight face when asked in Saturday's post-match interview whether his team had benefited from West Ham's fixture quandary. For Steve Bruce and Bryan Robson, however, this was no laughing matter.
The situation was especially tough on Birmingham, who kicked off against Tottenham half-an-hour after the final whistle at Upton Park. The confidence of Bruce's side has been brittle enough this season, but it must have been snapped in two by the knowledge that Portsmouth had moved level with them in the league table courtesy of Pardew's decision to rip the heart out of his team.
In contrast, City had to eke something out of their game with Spurs, whose own need for points in their quest for Champions League football was almost as great as their hosts. Birmingham were doomed before they had kicked a ball.
Brian Barwick, the FA chief executive, is fortunate that both Bruce and Robson are dignified enough to control their frustrations. In the circumstances, Bruce showed extraordinary restraint when he mused that "the ties could have been played on a Wednesday to give everyone a fair chance".
One can only imagine how, say, Jose Mourinho would have reacted if the passage of a Premiership title rival had been smoothed by the team selection of over-burdened opponents.
The FA have set a dangerous precedent in warping the domestic football schedule to allow England's players an extra week to rest their weary bodies.
Germany 2006 may be Eriksson's swansong, but his replacement - whoever he may be - will demand the same rights as his predecessor, so expect this year's chaotic arrangements to be a regular fixture over the coming seasons.
Ultimately, the biggest losers - not for the first time - will be the supporters. As if watching your B side dismantled by a Premiership struggler was not bad enough, West Ham's followers now face the arduous 400-mile round trip to Manchester on a Monday night.
It is hard to know which will be tested more: the physical endurance of the players, or the patience of the fans.
