Manchester City are favourites to win the FA Cup. This will not come as a surprise – after all, City are the only club in the last eight of this season’s competition to have won the trophy this century, in fact for half a century and then some. City’s players and coach have the awareness of what it takes.
Clubs such as Fulham, Brighton and Crystal Palace have never won the FA Cup, while Preston North End versus Aston Villa sounds like a quarter-final from 1897, which it was. The last time Nottingham Forest got to the cup final was 1991. Bournemouth, hosts of City on Sunday, have never even reached a semi-final.
Last season’s winners, Manchester United, are out, as are Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Newcastle United, who are all in the Premier League’s current top six.
So there are solid reasons for City’s status as favourites and should Pep Guardiola’s partially reconfigured squad click, then they will take some stopping.
Yet that is not the given it was when City were striding to a fourth consecutive league title this time last year, nor when they were top of the Premier League in October. The 13 goals scored so far in the Cup are not a real indication of strength or form either, considering eight came against Salford City and the others against Leyton Orient and Plymouth Argyle. Bournemouth, who defeated City 2-1 in November on the south coast, are the first serious-on-paper test of City in the competition.
It is a game to relish, so are the other three in their own way and with the FA and Premier League having agreed to stand-alone weekends for the FA Cup, the light will shine on the old trophy in a way it has not done for years. This feels like an authentic cup weekend – two games on Saturday, two on Sunday.
We can get ahead of ourselves and say it is evidence of a rejuvenation. It might not be quite that, but the absence of recent previous winners and the presence of outside contenders has certainly refreshed a competition dating back to 1871, when a club called Crystal Palace were one of the entrants, though allegedly not this Palace.
The cup has not suffered the monopolisation of the league title since state money and Champions League revenue skewed the Premier League; there have been six different winners in the past 10 years.
But City, United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea have been five of them. In 2021 Leicester City, as they had done with the league title, bucked expectations, their one misfortune being that it was a Covid final and did not feel the same.
Should City progress at Bournemouth, they will be two victories from salvaging silverware from the seabed of this bizarre wreck of a season. And if there are sky-blue ribbons of the trophy on May 17th, this will feel like late-March naive optimism. The notion of variety will have met professional reality. There will be the usual level of indifference at another Abu Dhabi City trophy.
But if City lose on Sunday it will mean – as it stands before kick-offs – the most recent remaining FA Cup winners are Forest in 1959 and Villa in 1957.
It’s Pathé News stuff. Aged 90, Villa’s Peter McParland is still sprightly. He scored two in the 1957 final, having joined Villa from Dundalk five years earlier.
It is all a long time ago and highlights the opportunity 2025 offers. It will be a shock if Villa do not get past Preston – last winners in 1938, when Bill Shankly was in the team, and today 14th in the Championship. But Fulham-Palace (8th vs 12th in the Premier League) and Brighton-Forest (7th vs 3rd) are not straightforward calls.
The latter should be, given Forest put seven past Brighton eight games ago, but the Seagulls have not lost since and have beaten Chelsea at home and Newcastle away to set up this chance. Brighton reached the semi-final two years ago, losing to Manchester United on penalties. Four years earlier Albion had reached the semis under Chris Hughton but lost 1-0 to City.
Brighton are getting close, but so are others. Palace were semi-finalists in 2022.
And there is a competitiveness to the Premier League this season, demonstrated by the table. Just nine points separate City in fifth from Palace in 12th – and the south Londoners have a game in hand. Six of the clubs still involved in the FA Cup are in this bracket, so none of them have the shadow of relegation across them as they prepare. Nor do they fear one another.
Any distractions are positive – possible Champions League places next season for Forest and City, with Fulham and Villa thinking the same. Villa have a Champions League quarter-final against Paris Saint-Germain to come.
Bournemouth, too, are still actively striving to reach Europe – for the first time – though they have suffered three single-goal defeats in their last five games.
The compactness of the league could also tell us something about the overall mediocrity of the division this season, a sentiment felt by plenty of those who go. Villa’s workload is surely a factor in some dipped performances – even if they were to exit against PNE and PSG Unai Emery’s squad will have a 56-game season.
There is, though, a rising middle class. The Premier League remains an unequal division, one vulnerable to state-owned transfer sprees, regardless of tighter financial regulation. If City spend again this summer, regain their composure – and Rodri – then we could be looking at this season as an anomaly.
But Brighton, Bournemouth, Fulham and Palace are upwardly mobile. (Forest were given a four-point deduction last season; theirs, like some others, is no fairy-tale.) At the very least, it would be novel to see a pair of them at Wembley.
Executives at each club will know intimately the placing money received in the league, but they will also note that from this stage alone the eventual FA Cup winners will receive £3.45 million (€4.13 million) in prize money. For the losing finalists it’s £2.45 million.
That’s not unhelpful and it’s just the start in terms of cash-flow from merchandising, tickets, sponsorship, TV coverage. The knock-on effects continue next season with a place in the Europa League. The 2025-26 accounts can be nudged. There is profile, too, a trophy might make a wavering player think again. It all gives the FA Cup modern relevance.
And then there is that old thing called sport. Quarter-finals should be alive with anticipation. “It could be us!” It feels this weekend as if that is the case.
May the most exciting teams win.
