Right. Daniel Farke has come out and said, with a straight face, that Leeds United's FA Cup run is actually going to HELP their relegation fight. That the "buzz" of a cup game against Manchester United will lift his squad for the battles ahead.

I nearly choked on my digestive.

In my day, we had a word for managers who said stuff like that. Deluded. No, actually, we had several words. Most of them I can't print here because LolFootball dot com has standards, apparently.

Look. I've been there. I managed Barrow in 2004 and we had a lovely little cup run going. Beat a couple of decent sides. The local paper called it "magical." The chairman was already pricing up new curtains for the boardroom. You know what happened to our league form? It fell off a cliff. Not a gentle slope. A cliff. Like Wile E. Coyote, legs still spinning in mid air before the inevitable plummet.

We won three cup games and lost six league matches on the bounce. I got sacked in March. The chairman kept the curtains.

That's the problem with modern football. Everyone talks about "momentum" and "buzz" like they're magic potions. Buzz doesn't stop your centre half getting a hamstring injury because he's played three games in eight days. Buzz doesn't fix your goal difference. Buzz is what you get from a pint on a Friday night. It is not a tactical plan.

Farke is a good manager. I'll give him that. He knows how to organise a side, he's got a decent eye for the game. But he's talking like a man trying to convince himself. And I know that voice. I used it plenty of times in press conferences when I knew full well the wheels were coming off.

"The lads are in good spirits." Translation: we are in deep trouble. "We're taking it one game at a time." Translation: I cannot look at the fixture list without feeling physically sick. "The cup gives us confidence." Translation: please, God, let something go right this week.

Here's what actually happens when you're scrapping for survival and you've got a cup game against one of the big boys. Your best players get kicked around for 90 minutes. Your squad, which is already thin because you're a relegation side and not exactly dripping with depth, gets stretched thinner than the budget at my old club's Christmas do. And then you've got a must win league game four days later with half the team running on fumes and Ibuprofen.

Don't get me started on the mentality side. You beat United in the cup? Great. Now your players think they're world beaters and go into the next league game against Wolves with all the focus of a cat in a fish market. You lose to United? Even better. Now your confidence is shattered AND you're out of the cup. Two for the price of one.

The FA Cup is a wonderful competition. I love it. Genuinely. Some of my best memories in football are cup days. The smell of the grass, the roar of a proper crowd, the feeling that anything could happen. In my day, we treated it with the reverence it deserved.

But if you're 17th in the Premier League and every remaining fixture feels like a cup final anyway, the last thing you need is an actual cup match adding to the pile.

Farke knows this. Deep down, in his bones, he knows. I can see it in his eyes during the press conferences. That look. I've worn that look. It's the look of a man who hasn't slept properly since January and is running on coffee and stubbornness.

Good luck to him. Genuinely. I hope Leeds stay up. I hope the buzz carries them to safety and a nice little day out at Wembley.

But I've seen this film before. And it doesn't have a happy ending.