FA Cup betting: what trends to look out for when picking the winner

Fifty years ago I watched on television as my neighbour scored a goal in the FA Cup final.

Peter Houseman got Chelsea’s first equaliser against Leeds. He played mostly on the left wing. After a replay, which I also watched on television, he held up a winner’s medal. Chelsea drew 2-2 after extra time at Wembley then won 2-1 after extra time at Old Trafford.

A lot has changed in half a century. A final can no longer go to a replay. Today no leading footballer would live on the same road as I do. They have fancier homes in posher places.

But some things have not changed. The 1970 finalists were two of the best teams in England. When they entered the FA Cup, Chelsea were third and Leeds second in what we now call the Premier League. Normally the FA Cup is won by a top team.

Alan Hansen used to say: “The best team win the league and the luckiest team win the FA Cup.” He won both as a centre-back for Liverpool between 1977 and 1990. Perhaps a better, though less catchy, definition would be that the best team win the league and the luckiest good team win the FA Cup.

It is 40 years since the FA Cup was won by a team from below the Premier League when Trevor Brooking headed the only goal of the 1980 final for West Ham to beat first-tier Arsenal.

Let us focus on the last 30 years, which began in 1990 when the FA Cup became Alex Ferguson’s first trophy for Manchester United.

All 30 FA Cup winners came from the Premier League. Only three were lower than ninth in the table when they played in the third round. Four were between ninth and seventh. Eight were between sixth and fourth. Fifteen were between third and first.

So half of all winners had been in the top three when they played in the FA Cup third round and more than three-quarters had been in the top six.

Colonel Richard Cantwell is a character in Ernest Hemingway’s novel Across the River and Into the Trees. He said: “You can’t fight on luck. It is just something that you need.”

I wish nobody fought, I should make clear. But that statement about fighting can be adapted for football. To win the FA Cup a team will probably have to be good, but along the way they might need a bit of luck as well.

It can come from a fortunate roll of the ball or blast on the referee’s whistle. Or it can come before anyone gets to a pitch, when ties are drawn.

A top Premier League team will usually knock out any lesser opponents. But the chance of progressing goes up as the level of opponents goes down, and also when playing at home rather than away.

There are 64 teams in the FA Cup third round. Forty-four come from below the Premier League. The chance of any given Premier League team drawing opponents from outside the Premier League is 44 out of 63, or 70 per cent.

Twenty-four of the last 30 FA Cup winners were a Premier League team who in the third round played opponents from below the Premier League – 80 per cent.

This tells us what our intuition would have suggested anyway: playing lower-level opponents in the third round is a help, but probably not a massive one – there are still five more rounds to go.

The chance of any team being drawn at home in the third round is 32 out of 64 – 50 per cent. If playing at home did not increase a team’s chance of winning we might have expected 15 of the last 30 FA Cup winners to have been drawn at home in the third round. But playing at home does improve a team’s chance of winning. Eighteen of the last 30 FA Cup winners played at home in the third round.

So a home draw is also an advantage, but also in all likelihood not a massive one – there are still five more rounds to go.

The chance of a Premier League team being drawn at home in the third round to opponents from below the Premier League is 32 out of 64 multiplied by 44 out of 63, which works out as 35 per cent. Fifteen of the last 30 FA Cup winners were a Premier League team who had been drawn at home in the third round to opponents from outside the Premier League – 50 per cent.

Chelsea in 1970 started at home to second-tier Birmingham.

Why there are FA Cup giantkillings but not many

Sixty years ago in 1960 Geoffrey Green, a football journalist with a poetical turn of phrase, was asked to write The Official History of the FA Cup.

“There is a charm about this great competition,” Green wrote. “It lies in the fact that it is the most democratic of contests. The giants cannot disport themselves in their own class; they must be prepared to face the dwarfs of lower spheres, and sometimes – indeed, very often – they come down with a resounding crash.”

“Proverbially, a good big one can always beat a good little one, but the fact that sometimes he does not adds a spice to life.”

There is less spice in life than Green thought he had tasted.

It is not surprising that the FA Cup is known as a scene of giantkillings. Only in knockout competitions do lower level teams play higher level opponents, so it is only in a knockout competition that a lower level team can beat a higher division opponent. And sometimes they do, but perhaps not as often as we think we remember.

Arthur Drewry, then FA chairman, wrote an introduction to Green’s book. Drewry also described the FA Cup as a democratic competition, though one in which “the prize goes regularly to one of our famous and powerful League clubs”. It still does.

Round by round the Premier League squeezes out opponents from below. During the last quarter-century – 1995 to 2019 – Premier League teams accounted for 31 per cent of all competitors in the FA Cup third round, 46 per cent in the fourth round, 58 per cent in the fifth round, 77 per cent in the sixth round, 84 per cent in semi-finals, 96 per cent of finalists – and 100 per cent of winners.

A tragic loss of life

A horrible change during the last 50 years was that Peter Houseman left us way too early. Peter, his wife Sally and two friends were killed in a car crash in 1977. He was 31. By then Peter played for Oxford and the Housemans had moved to Witney. I was a boy when they lived in Oakley in Hampshire. People old enough to know them better remember them as a lovely family.

Today's top sports betting stories

Follow us on Twitter @racingpostsport

Like us on Facebook RacingPostSport