Matt Maher: Seize the moment - it may not come around again

In an era when the word legend is wildly overused, Statham is someone for whom the term is appropriate, having made nearly 400 appearances for Albion and been a key component in a team which more than four decades on, still gets supporters lucky enough to have seen it in action misty-eyed.

But as Statham would quickly admit, there is one important piece missing from his legacy. Revered though the team of Regis, Cunningham, Robson et al might remain, they were never able to back up their brilliance with silverware.

“That’s the one regret, obviously,” says Statham. “We were more than capable. But we never quite got over the line.”

Statham points to FA Cup semi- final defeats to Ipswich in 1978 and Second Division QPR in 1982 as the two big chances which got away. His reflections will likely strike a chord with any professional athlete who reads them.

“When the first one happened, against Ipswich, I remember thinking: ‘This is OK, we will be back here again next year, or the year after,” Statham explained.

“Obviously we did get back in 1982 but after that one, we never really had a sight.

“The truth is, you only get eight, nine or 10 chances in a career to get to a final and if you don’t take them, you never know when they are going to come round again.

“You don’t really appreciate that when you are young. When you are older, you do.”

You wonder whether similar thoughts were going through Eddie Howe’s mind last Sunday when he spoke after Newcastle’s Carabao Cup final defeat to Manchester United.

The Magpies have the look of a club on the rise since their takeover by Saudi Arabia’s PIF fund and the smart money remains on them winning a first major trophy since 1955 sooner rather than later.

But as Howe noted, there are no guarantees. Sunday might have been the club’s first final for more than two decades but it was no free hit. Howe knew his team had already blown another possible path to glory in this season’s FA Cup. Beating Sheffield Wednesday, Fleetwood and Burnley was all they needed to do in order to reach the last eight, yet they tumbled at the first hurdle.

We’ll be back?

That was certainly the belief among Villa supporters, when they filed out of Wembley after losing the 2010 League Cup final to Manchester United, confident their club was still climbing under Martin O’Neill’s management and Randy Lerner’s ownership. And yes, they have been back twice since, first for the FA Cup final in 2015 and then the League Cup five years later, yet on both occasions they returned a more hardened, wiser fanbase, complete with the knowledge the path to glory never runs so smoothly as you’d like. More often than not, you never quite reach the end.

That is something Wolves supporters also understand. There is no point pretending the past three years have panned out as everyone envisioned.

The 2019 FA Cup semi-final and 2020 Europa League quarter-final felt like just the beginning but instead they were as good as it got under Nuno.

Julen Lopetegui’s long-term challenge is to ensure those moments weren’t the high points of the Fosun era but first he must keep the club in the Premier League.

At the top, it often looks easy for the perennial winners like Manchester City, aided by their reserves of cash and quality.

Yet while supporters can sometimes be guilty of taking it all for granted, there is a reason Pep Guardiola and his players never do the same. The Catalan has won 31 major trophies since first taking charge of Barcelona B in 2007, including two Champions League titles, yet every success is celebrated as though it were his first, regardless of whether it is the Premier League or Carabao Cup. Like Alex Ferguson before him, Guardiola understands the difficulty of each triumph. When you win so often, you know how easy it is to lose.

That’s something Manchester United supporters surely realised during their six trophyless years prior to last Sunday’s triumph.

Erik ten Hag proudly taking the Carabao Cup into his post-match press conference might have drawn snide remarks from some quarters but the Dutchman understood the significance of the win. Had United lost at Wembley, would they have possessed the confidence to come from behind and beat West Ham in the FA Cup barely 72 hours later? A season of rebirth at Old Trafford could quickly have taken a very different mood had his team not cleared the final hurdle at Wembley.

The FA Cup offers United the chance of more glory this term. So too Brighton, who are a home win over League Two Grimsby away from the semi-finals.

But not Tottenham. The north London club would have set up a home tie with Blackburn had they beaten Sheffield United but instead they were bundled out of the competition by the Championship promotion-chasers, Harry Kane wearing a look of anguish as he headed their final chance of the match wide.

Kane might be the greatest striker England has ever produced but in an otherwise remarkable career silverware has so far eluded him. He turns 30 in the summer.

His hope must be he is not years from now in the same position as Statham and many others, left to rue those moments which got away.