The FA respond to Newcastle fan complaints of playing a weakened team v Leicester in third round of the FA Cup.

Robbie Savage has called John Carver’s FA Cup team selection ‘ridiculous’ and said that Newcastle’s aim can’t only be about avoiding relegation.

A massive 85% of fans believe that Mike Ashley had sent down orders for a weakened team v Leicester to be played.

Pardew and his team won the cup-tie but Neil Warnock certainly won when it came to appearing to be trying to get out of the competition, making 11 changes.

At the same stage of this competition last season, Manchester United travelled to Leeds and had the following seven players in their line-up; Berbatov, Fabio, Giggs, Park, Carrick, Valencia and Owen.

Maybe the answer is that a bit like giving clubs involved in Europe a bye in the early round of the Capital One (League) Cup, could teams involved in the Europa League get some kind of ‘Get Out Of Jail’ card?