Fear of survival distracts Everton from romance

An Evertonian born and bred, Alan Stubbs sums up the feeling of fear and frustration at Goodison Park.

The tough defender, who has survived a run-in with testicular cancer, said he and his team-mates would willingly sacrifice FA Cup-winners' medals for a guaranteed place in the Premiership next season.

Stubbs and Everton will be fighting to reach the Cup semi-finals when they face Middlesbrough at the Riverside in the sixth round today. Over 6,000 Merseyside fans will make the trip North-east, but they will travel under a cloud of potential relegation and facing the by-now annual fight to protect their 48-year unbroken run in the top flight.

This is nothing new. They avoided relegation the season they last won the Cup, in 1995, and Stubbs said: "The Cup is only special if you're safe in the League. It goes without saying that we'd swap a Cup final place for Premiership safety. The Middlesbrough game will be a difficult one to focus on. People have been coming up to me and saying they are not really bothered about the Cup, that the League is more important.

"I can understand that, but if we do well at Middlesbrough then our confidence levels rise as we go into our next game, and that's a League game with Fulham next weekend. That's how we must look at it."

Conventional wisdom can never decide whether a good Cup run is a distraction from League matters or an inspiration, but for Stubbs the situation is clear: "We need to pick up, it's as simple as that. We have to be more consistent, and if an FA Cup win helps us in the League then great, but at the moment we are totally focused on the League."

Despite the club's plight, their ticket allocation has been snapped up. "I tried to buy a couple of tickets for mates and was told they were sold out," Stubbs said. "We have to repay the fans for that loyalty."

The squad is crippled by injuries and the club's manager, Walter Smith, who is likely to look to the 34-year-old Paul Gascoigne for a rescue act, understands the dilemma. "We have important League games to come," he said, "but we must concentrate on the Cup and try to forget about the League just for a day.

"There have been many situations in the past where teams who are fighting relegation get to Cup finals. You can't really separate the two things for players, it's just whether they perform well on the day.

"Cup ties have nothing to do with the League and the way you are playing, it's a one-off and you are either in or out on the day depending on how you play."