Big Weekend: Newcastle v Brighton, Fulham, Muslic, Mateta, Leeds v West Brom, Napoli v Inter

It’s FA Cup fifth-round weekend and, with plenty of big clubs missing in action, there’s a real chance for someone to make an unlikely run to trophy glory here, just as Manchester United did last year.

Game to watch: Newcastle v Brighton
It’s an interesting last 16 of the FA Cup this year precisely because it has a slightly unusual make-up with four of the Big Six – including the country’s only two teams who haven’t been some flavour or other of sh*t this season – gone and one of the survivors being a historically dreadful Manchester United.

What that’s meant is a tantalising and rare trophy opportunity for a whole bunch of other clubs who are having decent seasons or are at the very least in currently good form. Your Forests. Your Bournemouths. Your Fulhams. The Crystal Palaces of this world.

And for the most part, the draw has kept those teams apart. It makes things interesting, but means we perhaps lack a real standout tie.

But if we ignore as we must the ridiculous Manchester United because they are somehow actually the holders of this grand old trophy, there is one exception, and that’s Newcastle v Brighton.

Newcastle still have other avenues open to them, of course, but even though they are already in the final of the Carabao it does necessitate playing against Liverpool. That is not something they need concern themselves with in this competition and thus even at this relatively early stage it remains a route to trophy-drought-ending they would want to keep intact.

Brighton are in the middle of what has come to be the standard Brighton season, in which their very best football is right up there with pretty much anyone but just doesn’t quite materialise often enough or for long enough.

The good news for them, and bad news for Newcastle, is that they are currently in one of their little purple patches having won three in a row while Newcastle’s form has just dropped a little from the highs of six Premier League wins in a row over Christmas and the new year and the twin Carabao dismantlings of Arsenal.

This one ought to be as close to a guarantee of a fun watch as you can get, as long as you can get your head past a 1.45pm kick-off time which seems extremely weird and disorientating to us for reasons that we can’t really get to make any meaningful actual sense.

READ MORE: Newcastle second-worst Champions League contender as clear qualification favourite emerges

Team to watch: Fulham
Should absolutely be backing themselves to sort Manchester United out at Old Trafford, shouldn’t they? United do, admittedly, have some kind of weird hold over this competition having made their way incongruously and hilariously through the field last year to thoroughly outplay Man City in the final and having already taken care of Arsenal despite having only 10 men for a good chunk of it in round three.

Victory over Leicester in round four was far dicier, and they come into this one on the back of a 3-2 win over Ipswich that didn’t really answer a whole lot of questions about the current viability of anything they are doing.

Fulham, for their part, are two things: better than Man United, yet also quite hard to pin down. They’ve lost home and away to United in the league, which feels vaguely unforgivable but also quite on brand.

For the most part, Fulham have spent this season being good against good teams and bad against bad ones. Their other defeats in the last couple of months have come against West Ham and Crystal Palace, while they’ve also failed to beat both Ipswich and Southampton.

In that same time period they’ve had wins over Chelsea, Nottingham Forest and Newcastle and draws with both Liverpool and Arsenal. Full disclosure, they have also beaten Leicester and most recently Wolves.

But the point stands. Generally speaking, the better the opposition, the better Fulham play. Which means this weekend represents a real challenge for them.

Player to watch: Jean-Philippe Mateta
Always a bit of luck involved in the player to watch for a cup weekend, but while we remain of course powerfully invested in Crystal Palace’s pursuit of the 50-point mark this season we would also like to think that the now rock-solid mid-table safety they occupy in the league and a week off after this London derby with Millwall will see Oliver Glasner go strong and make a real push for very attainable silverware.

The position of mid-table safety Palace now enjoy has come on the back of a run that places them among the form sides across Europe.

They have lost only twice since Christmas in an all-competition run that has also included eight wins and two draws.

And key to that run has been the form of Mateta, who has scored eight goals in his last nine games, including one in the 4-1 thrashing of Villa with which Palace have warmed up for this cup tie.

Millwall got here with a shock 2-0 win at Leeds, a result they promptly celebrated with a 5-1 defeat at relegation-threatened fellow fifth-rounders Plymouth. So if selected, you’d imagine Mateta should get the chance to improve that recent record further.

Manager to watch: Miron Muslic
Fair to say it’s been quite the new-manager bounce for Plymouth after all that Wayne Rooney unpleasantness. Muslic had been confirmed as the new manager but wasn’t actually in charge for the 1-0 win at Brentford in round three, but very much oversaw a 1-0 win over Liverpool that will live forever in Argyle history.

And those aren’t isolated results either, with a Plymouth team that appeared doomed to relegation now up to 22nd and only three points adrift of safety. They have lost just once in their last six league games, which included that 5-1 thumping of Millwall as well as taking four points off promotion contenders Sunderland and West Brom in back-to-back games.

If he can mastermind a victory over Pep Guardiola – a man he describes as ‘a huge role model’ – at the Etihad, it might just be his best trick yet.

Football League game to watch: Leeds v West Brom
Yes, we had Leeds here last week. No, we won’t be apologising for going obvious once again

Two weeks ago, Leeds played fourth-placed Sunderland, went 1-0 down and won the game in dramatic style with two goals in the last 15 minutes.

On Monday, Leeds played second-placed Sheffield United, went 1-0 down and won the game in dramatic style with three goals in the last 20 minutes.

This week, they host fifth-placed West Brom. It is definitely the game to watch, even if confusingly this one is not on a Monday night.

European game to watch: Napoli v Inter
Again, plenty of good ones around this weekend but hard to look beyond this one, with Napoli handed an immediate chance to reclaim top spot from Inter after losing it in a shock 2-1 defeat at Como last time out.

Inter now head to the Diego Maradona Stadium with a one-point lead after beating Genoa last weekend, while Atalanta – three points behind Inter and two behind Napoli – will be keen observers this weekend, with a home game against 19th-placed Venezia offering them a fine chance to overhaul whichever side should lose here or make inroads on both in the case of a draw. Proper title race, this.