FA Cup myth busting: Easy home draws, shocks, those 3pm kick offs and do the big clubs care?

The FA Cup. Not what it used to be, eh? It was better in my day, wasn’t it?

Jumpers for goal posts and cloth-capped pipe smokers twiddling their moustaches in approval at watching shock after shock on boggy brown pitches… oh yes, those were the days.

The television build-up to the final began 136 hours before kick-off and every single person in the town came together to sing Abide with Me at 2.55pm. Halcyon times.

Anyway, we’ve all got our opinion on the FA Cup and its relevance in 2025, but when you hear that the competition has lost its lustre, how true is that?

At The Athletic we like to go big or go home, so just for you we’ve analysed data going back decades to either dispel a few FA Cup myths or, in some cases, prove just how much things have actually changed.

Sadly there is no bar chart to measure the amount of magic generated per year because this isn’t a Harry Potter book, but we can look at shocks, kick-off times, draws and whether big clubs take the competition seriously.

Right, without further ado, release the balls into the bag…

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“There aren’t as many shocks as there used to be”

Well, there is some truth to this, but probably not as much as you might think.

We’ve looked at every FA Cup since 1960 and analysed how many matches pitched a top-flight team against a side from a lower division — and then worked out how many times an upset occurred, giving us a percentage.

For example, in 1960 there were 34 lower league versus top flight fixtures (either home or away) and the lower league team triumphed on nine occasions, giving us a shock percentage of 26.5 per cent.

Who can forget when plucky Aston Villa from the second tier felled the mighty Preston North End (ninth in the top flight that season) 2-0 in the quarter-finals in 1960?

There was also Everton, managed by David Moyes (probably… it was actually Johnny Carey), suffering a huge upset at the hands of third-tier Bradford City in a textbook third-round shock at Valley Parade that same year.

What the data tells us is that the number of shocks has dropped slightly in the last two decades, but any particular year can still throw up a high number of upsets.

Just two years ago, in the 2022-23 season, there were seven shocks from 25 matches (28 per cent), including Championship side Sheffield United beating Antonio Conte’s Tottenham Hotspur in the fifth round, while League Two outfit Grimsby Town beat Premier League Southampton at St Mary’s to reach the quarter-finals for the first time in 84 years.

By decade, we can see that the average number of inter-divisional shocks doesn’t vary too much from the 1960s (23.3 per cent) to the 2000s (22.1 per cent) but there has been a drop in the 2010s and 2020s (so far), albeit still with the capacity for a decent number of shocks in any given season, like in 2023 but also in 2019 (25 per cent) and 2013 (27.6 per cent).

The number of shocks involving a team either from non-League or the fourth tier beating a top-flight team, though, has actually become more regular with 12 instances of this happening from 2010 to 2025 (such as that Grimsby win, fourth-tier Oxford United beating Swansea in 2016, or non-League Lincoln City beating Burnley in 2017).

That compares with only four instances between 1995 and 2009, perhaps owing to a better standard in the lower leagues and/or middling top-flight sides having more of a tendency to rest players en masse.

In terms of overall shocks, to back up the theory of randomness from one year to the next, the highest percentage of FA Cup giant killings came in 1982 (43.5 per cent), a year after the lowest number of shocks had been recorded (5.3 per cent in 1981).

That year, there was only one instance of a top-fight team losing to a lower league side; Leicester City, who finished 24th and last in the old Division One, losing 3-1 away at third-tier Exeter City in a fourth round replay.

Exeter would reach the quarter-finals for what remains only the second time in their history, losing to Spurs. Interestingly, in the same month as losing to Exeter and despite their miserable season, Leicester would beat the mighty Liverpool at Anfield to end their incredible unbeaten home run of 85 matches in all competitions, a sequence that had lasted three years.

Anyway, in summary, FA Cup shocks… they were pretty rare back in the day, like when Wrexham’s Mickey Thomas stuck one in Arsenal’s onion bag or Ronnie Radford generated a minor earthquake in Hereford. And they’re pretty rare now, like Coventry City scoring twice in stoppage time to knock Wolves out last season or Plymouth Argyle beating Liverpool earlier this month.

To be fair, that’s probably why they’re called shocks.

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“There aren’t as many Saturday 3pm kick-offs”

OK, this won’t take as long.

No, there really aren’t as many Saturday 3pm kick-offs. Not in any competition, and certainly not in the FA Cup.

Back in the pre-television days pretty much every FA Cup match took place on a Saturday at 3pm; even the semi-finals and the final. But that has all changed in recent decades.

The last 10 years have seen a dramatic decline, with the number of Saturday 3pm kick-offs from the third round onwards dropping by more than half.

In the 2015-16 season, 36 matches from the third round onwards began at the hallowed time football has traditionally been played in England. Last season this dropped to just 15, with none from the fifth round (which was played in midweek) onwards.

This season the fifth round has returned to a weekend, but there will almost certainly still only be 15 Saturday 3pm kick-offs in 2024-25. There have been 14 so far, but only Bournemouth versus Wolverhampton Wanderers is being played at that time this weekend, with all other matches being scheduled for television or streaming coverage.

The big drop in 2018-19 can be attributed to the FA signing a new £820million ($1.034bn) overseas television deal. Only 10 of 32 third-round ties kicked off at 3pm on a Saturday that season, leading to the Football Supporters’ Federation saying there was a “grave danger” that the magic of the FA Cup was under threat.

Again, there is no bar chart reflecting the alleged loss of magic in 2019, so you will have to judge for yourselves on that one.

On the one hand, fewer Saturday 3pms = less magic, but millions watching on television = more people witnessing said magic. Tough one.

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“Big clubs don’t take the FA Cup seriously anymore”

Remember when holders Manchester United boycotted the FA Cup in 2000 because the third round clashed with the Club World Cup in Brazil?

United were pressured to go by the FA, believing it would help England’s bid to host the 2006 World Cup, and a furious Daily Mirror ran a front page with everyone from Prime Minister Tony Blair to model Caprice (“They should think about the fans”) and film critic Barry Norman (“It devalues a noble competition”) lambasting their decision.

It was the death of the FA Cup as we knew it. Big clubs didn’t give a damn anymore. The greatest club competition in the world was suddenly deprived of its magic. Except, well, that’s not really true is it?

The data tells us that big clubs actually take the FA Cup more seriously than ever before.

Since 2000 when United went on a jolly to Brazil, drew with Necaxa and lost to Vasco da Gama, only three non-big six clubs have won the FA Cup. Test your pals with that quiz question, the answer being; Portsmouth (2008), Wigan Athletic (2013) and Leicester City (2021).

Otherwise it’s been complete domination between the big six of Arsenal (seven wins since 2000), Chelsea (six), Manchester City (three), Liverpool (three), Manchester United (three) and, erm, Spurs (none, sorry).

Sure, they rotate their squads, but the quality of those squads mean they invariably breeze through to the latter stages regardless.

This means that the romantic notion of a second-tier side, or indeed even just a bottom-half Premier League team, winning the competition has been seriously quelled.

The last side from outside the top 10 teams in the top flight to win the competition were Wigan (2013). Before that? Everton in 1995, Manchester United (yes, really) in 1990 and West Ham back in 1980, with the latter the most recent second-tier team to win the competition, 45 years ago.

In the 20 years before 1980, eight teams from outside the top flight’s elite won the competition, including a couple of second-tier sides in the 1970s. So yes, the big clubs take the FA Cup pretty seriously these days.

Either that, or there’s a yawning financial disparity between the big clubs and the rest of the country.

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“Big clubs rotate their squads, they never used to before”

Yes, big clubs rotate their enormous squads like never before, but that doesn’t mean rotation is a modern notion.

When Preston’s ‘Invincibles’ won the inaugural Football League title in 1888-89 and completed English football’s first double by also lifting the FA Cup, they rotated their goalkeepers.

Welshman James Trainer was between the sticks (quite literally given there were no nets in those days) in the league, but he didn’t play at all in the FA Cup, with the magnificently named Dr Robert Herbert Mills-Roberts keeping nets (metaphorically).

There is no denying that the majority of Premier League clubs and even those outside the top flight will make nine, 10 or even 11 changes for some FA Cup matches, but, interestingly, the list of top FA Cup goalscorers from Premier League clubs in the past couple of decades shows that all the top-scoring big guns are there.

Erling Haaland, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Romelu Lukaku and Son Heung-min have all topped the list in recent years. So have Cristiano Ronaldo, Sergio Aguero, Robin van Persie, Nicolas Anelka and Ruud van Nistelrooy earlier in the century.

Matty Fryatt and Jonathan Walters have too, but you get the point.

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“Chelsea and Man City get easy home draws”

Sure, the big clubs tend to play more games in the FA Cup, so their chances of landing more easy home draws than the rest of the Premier League or Championship is obviously greater. But, anecdotally at least, it has seemed that Chelsea in particular are handed a ridiculous amount of games at Stamford Bridge against lower league minnows.

So how does the data stack up on that? Are Chelsea getting easy draws?

Well, yes, they absolutely are.

In fact in the 10 years since the 2015-16 season, of the 34 matches that Chelsea have played in the third, fourth, fifth and sixth rounds (not including any semi-finals or finals at Wembley), 15 have been home draws against teams from either the Championship, League One or League Two.

The roll call in full: Scunthorpe United, Peterborough United, Brentford, Hull City, Nottingham Forest (twice), Sheffield Wednesday, Morecambe (twice), Luton Town, Chesterfield, Plymouth Argyle, Preston, Leeds United and Leicester City.

They have won every single one of those matches, rattling up an aggregate score of 51-8.

Manchester City are the next most favoured top-flight club on the list, with nine easy home draws since 2015-16.

It’s nice to dispel some myths. But, heck, it’s good to prove one or two as well, isn’t it?

(Top photos: Non-league Sutton celebrate beating Coventry of the top flight in 1989 – Simon Bruty/Allsport/Getty Images; Mickey Thomas scores for Wrexham against Arsenal in 1992 – Malcolm Croft – PA Images via Getty Images)

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