Could 2024-25 finally be the Year of the Underdog in the FA Cup?

This weekend sees an FA Cup quarter-final line-up that, in the not-so-distant past, could have passed for the latter stages of the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy.

Preston North End, Aston Villa, Bournemouth, Manchester City, Fulham, Crystal Palace, Brighton & Hove Albion and Nottingham Forest represent what is surely the most unusual final eight in the FA Cup for some time.

But how can we quantify just how unfamiliar and abnormal the quarter-finalists are, without resorting to using an expected underdog (xU) rating?

For a start, yes, this really does have an EFL Trophy feel to it if you consider that the 1998-99 Auto Windscreens Shield as it was known then (now known, of course, as the Vertu Trophy) featured five of these clubs.

Bournemouth, Preston, Fulham, Brighton and Manchester City were all in the bottom two divisions that season (kids, this was pre-money City) although none of them reached the final eight of the competition.

Since 1998-99 onwards, seven of the eight teams in question have spent time in League One or League Two, with only Aston Villa avoiding that level, although they did spend three seasons in the Championship from 2016 to 2019.

As recently as 2016-17, only three of the eight were in the Premier League; Manchester City, Bournemouth and Crystal Palace.

The other five were all in the Championship that season. Forest avoided relegation to League One on goal difference, Brighton were promoted to the Premier League as runners-up, Fulham lost in the play-offs and Villa and Preston finished in mid-table. It should be noted that this season’s Carabao Cup winners Newcastle United were also in the Championship in 2016-17, winning the second tier that year under Rafael Benitez.

However, with seven of the eight now in the Premier League, to call this a massively surprising last eight based on league position would be untrue.

As recently as last season, there were more Championship teams in the quarter finals, namely Leicester City and Coventry City, while this stage of the competition two years ago featured Grimsby Town from the fourth tier.

A Grimsby Town fan waving an inflatable fish at their FA Cup quarter-final in 2023 (Clive Rose/Getty Images)

So far, then, it’s more ‘overdoggy’ than ‘underdoggy’.

Where it is atypical is in how rare an FA Cup run is for most of these clubs.

Four of this season’s quarter-finalists have never won the competition. That’s Crystal Palace, Brighton, Fulham and Bournemouth.

Of those four, Bournemouth haven’t even reached a semi-final before, making them the most ‘in uncharted territory’ of the last eight.

Palace have lost in two finals (1990 and 2016, on both occasions to Manchester United), Brighton’s only final was in 1983 when they also lost to Manchester United after a replay, while Fulham’s solitary Wembley appearance was in 1975 when they were beaten by West Ham United.

Manchester City, of course, reached the final as recently as last year, losing to, yep, Manchester United, and won it the year before in 2023, their third FA Cup triumph since 2011 and their seventh overall.

The other three quarter-finalists haven’t won the FA Cup since not just when humans walked on the moon, but when humans even went into space. Yes, we’re talking pre-Yuri Gagarin 1961 territory.

Aston Villa celebrate winning the FA Cup in 1957, they have yet to land it again (Douglas Miller/Keystone/Getty Images)

Forest’s last FA Cup success was in 1959, Villa’s most recent trophy lift came two years earlier in 1957, while Preston’s pre-dates the Second World War, with them last winning it in 1938.

In terms of finals for that trio, Villa have lost two this century (0-4 against Arsenal in 2015 and 0-1 in an awful game against Chelsea in 2000), but Forest’s last FA Cup final was in 1991 when they were still managed by Brian Clough and lost to Tottenham Hotspur.

Preston have reached two finals since their 1938 success, losing to West Bromwich Albion in 1954 and West Ham in 1964.

In fact, Preston have one of the worst FA Cup final records of any team in English football, having reached seven finals and only won two (their other win, of course, came in 1889 when they completed a league-and-cup double in the first season it was possible to do so).

That means they have won 28 per cent of the finals they have reached, which can only be bettered (or to be more accurate, worsened) by five existing English clubs; Leicester and Huddersfield Town, who both have a 20 per cent win record having won one of the five finals they have played in, and Leeds United, Derby County and Southampton, who have a 25 per cent record with one win each from four finals.

So we have established this season’s final eight are rare in terms of seven of them having either never won it or not won it for at least 66 years, but how unusual is it to have so many infrequent FA Cup winners reaching the last eight at the same time?

Well, as the graphic above shows, since the formation of the Premier League, this is the most unlikely final eight in terms of their FA Cup history.

It also, however, represents a slight growing trend in that in three of the past seven seasons, the quarter-finalists have had more than 750 years combined since their most recent FA Cup success (for teams yet to win the trophy we’ll count back to 1871, the year before the first FA Cup final).

The first of those outliers was in 2019 when the likes of Wolverhampton Wanderers (who hadn’t won it since 1960) and three clubs who had never won the FA Cup reached the last eight stage, in Watford, Swansea and Millwall. It was an enthralling list… and Manchester City won the cup.

The next outlier came in 2023 with clubs like Sheffield United (last victorious in 1925) and Blackburn Rovers (1928) as well as winless Fulham and the aforementioned Grimsby. It was an enthralling list… and Manchester City won the cup.

Anyway, at the risk of upsetting Manchester City fans, this season feels more open, given the struggles of Pep Guardiola’s team of late. And while last season’s quarter-final line-up featured a host of familiar names like the two Manchester clubs, Chelsea and Liverpool — hence the low bar on the graph — to the wider football world it’s probably more enjoyable to see a few less established names vying for the cup.

Preston’s players, including Bill Shankly, celebrate winning the FA Cup in 1938 (Fox Photos/Getty Images)

As well as rare silverware on offer for everybody bar City, there is also the prospect of featuring in the Europa League next season which, again, would be a first for a few of the clubs.

For three of them, Europe is fresh in the memory. City and Villa both reached this season’s Champions League and Villa are proudly in the quarter-finals, while Brighton played in the Europa League in 2023-24 via finishing sixth in the Premier League a season earlier under Roberto De Zerbi.

For the other five, European football is very rarely on the agenda.

Fulham have featured in a European competition on just three occasions. They last played in Europe in 2011-12 when they competed in the Europa League via UEFA’s now defunct ‘fair play’ rankings, which handed out three Europa League spots to the nicest teams in Europe.

They had previously reached the final of the competition in 2010 under Roy Hodgson, losing to Atletico Madrid, having properly qualified via a league position of seventh the season before.

Forest’s last European adventure was way back in 1995-96 in the UEFA Cup, which they qualified for having finished third in the Premier League in 1994-95 (this was before the expansion of the Champions League gave England’s top flight more than one slot). They beat Malmo, Auxerre and Lyon and reached the quarter-finals, where they lost 7-2 on aggregate to Bayern Munich.

Forest have not played European football since 1995-96 (Clive Brunskill/ALLSPORT)

Crystal Palace have never qualified for Europe but are pretty unlucky not to have done so. For a long time, losing FA Cup finalists were handed a European place if the winner had already qualified via their league position, however this rule was scrapped in 2015, meaning Palace’s loss in the 2016 final didn’t lead to Europe despite Manchester United finishing fifth that season.

In 1990, they also lost to United, who went straight into the old European Cup Winners’ Cup as they only finished 13th in the league that season. A year later, in 1991, Palace finished third in the top flight, the club’s best-ever finish, but only the top two league spots led to a European place with English teams only slowly reintroduced back into Europe that year, following a complete ban after the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985.

Palace did feature in the 1998-99 Intertoto Cup (a pre-season qualifying competition for what is now the Europa League), which clubs had to accept an invitation to take part in, though most turned it down due to it starting in July. Palace, though, said yes, which meant that despite them finishing bottom of the Premier League in 1997-98, they were in Europe. Well, briefly. They played one overseas match in Turkey, lost 2-0 in both legs of their tie against Samsunspor and were out of Europe before the new domestic season had even started.

As for Preston and Bournemouth, they’ve never played in Europe before in any form. Just imagine if they met in the final?

Alternatively, let’s just stop getting carried away — because clearly Manchester City are going to spoil everyone’s fun.

(Photo by Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)