Scrapping FA Cup replays from the first round proper next season is for the greater good, right?
That is how the decision is being presented by the English Football Association and the Premier League after announcing that from round one of the 2024-25 competition, the stage at which clubs from Leagues One and Two — the third and fourth tiers of the pyramid — enter, replays are no more.
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Non-League clubs will still have replays in the qualifying rounds, of which there are six, from the extra preliminary rounds that usually begin in August.
The FA believes it strengthens its most important asset in a much-changed sporting world and eases worries about fixture congestion, while the new expanded version of the Club World Cup starts in summer 2025, having a further negative impact on the FA Cup.
In need of greater income to fund its grassroots work in the game, the FA gave up potentially money-spinning replays and the cup final’s traditional slot on the Saturday after the Premier League season concludes in return for an exclusive weekend for the fifth round (the last-16 stage) with no Premier League matches being played and also Premier League-free weekends for the semis and final. That will enable it to spread the third, fourth and fifth rounds out over long weekends, so more of the ties can be on TV and bring in more revenue.
Everyone happy? No chance.
Replays have been transformative for clubs in recent history — mainly for their finances, with six-figure fees from broadcasters for appearing on live TV and the gate receipts boosting budgets considerably. Not to mention the memories from a big day out.
Nigel Clough appreciates more than most how integral they can be.
In the winter of the 2005-06 season, he was seven-and-a-half years into a decade as manager of Burton Albion when the then non-League club landed a third-round tie at home to Manchester United.
That game finished goalless, earning Burton — who had moved into their new Pirelli Stadium a year earlier — a replay at Old Trafford which made them at least £800,000 in shared gate receipts and TV payments.
“The money we earned from the replay gave us a foundation to build on,” says Clough, who this week led Mansfield Town to promotion from League Two. “The bottom line is it paid off the stadium, which had been a huge undertaking, as these things always tend to go over budget. Being able to settle all our bills thanks to the replay gave the club the platform to achieve what it did over the next few years.” (Burton were promoted to the EFL in 2009, and got to the second-tier Championship seven years later.)
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The remnants of the replay money could be spent on the squad once the stadium debt had been settled.
“The chairman (Ben Robinson) was in tears at the final whistle,” says Clough. “That’s how much getting a replay meant. The funny thing is, we had a big penalty shout near the end of the first game — (United defender) Gerard Pique looked to have handled the ball. The chairman was the only man in the stadium not shouting for the penalty! He wanted the replay.”
Burton lost that replay 5-0 but Clough, who had played for Nottingham Forest (including in an FA Cup final), Liverpool and England, loved every second.
“For a Conference (non-League) team playing at Old Trafford, it is a great occasion, no matter what the score,” said Clough. “Scrapping replays is a step backwards. The big clubs will go on about all the games they play, but they have 25-man squads. I don’t see it being an issue. But the big clubs have decided it is, and that’s that.”
Exeter City are another club who are indebted to the FA Cup and replays.
In 2004-05, they were in non-League and saddled with £4.5million worth of debt. Then came their FA Cup third-round trip to Manchester United. Fifth-tier Exeter held United 0-0 at Old Trafford to earn a replay back at St James Park, which they lost 2-0. But the real result of the two matches was that they earned around £800,000 in revenue, a windfall which changed the outlook of the fan-owned club, as they were back in the EFL by 2008.
“It probably accelerated our pathway into becoming solvent,” club president Julian Tagg says. “It was hugely significant to us.
“It (the decision to scrap replays from round one on) is a loss all around for the clubs that are going to miss out in future. It will be an income stream they won’t even get the opportunity of. Equally important, the fans won’t have the opportunity to witness those giant-killing acts that make the FA Cup very much what it is.
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“You haven’t got to talk to many people to understand the benefit that it brings to the local community when a club gets a replay and brings a big team back to their small ground and town.”
In January 2016, then fourth-tier Exeter drew 2-2 at home to Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool, which earned them a trip to Anfield for a replay, which they lost 3-0.
“Just to have the opportunity to go there, everybody in the city was involved, it was special,” Tagg says. “Whether you get the draw at your own place and go to a big stadium (for the replay) or you go to a big stadium and come back, it’s exactly the same. Any kind of windfall, whether it be a player (sale) or cup games, is massive.
“It’s a reason why many people who run football clubs and are part of the ownership, or volunteer, do it and why the fans turn up — because, one day, that might be an opportunity for them. The chance of that happening has now been reduced. It will be significantly detrimental to many clubs who need it.”
Traditionalists may recoil, but the FA Cup and availability bias go hand in hand. Most fans can reel off their club’s finest moments in the world’s oldest cup competition, but each team’s catalogue of dreary exits tends to blend into one long, miserable January of the mind.
And it’s similar with replays for lower-league sides away at big clubs. It is no trouble recalling half a town decamping to Anfield or Old Trafford on a Tuesday night, but easier to forget that it is actually a rare occurrence.
Historically, the narrative arc of a ‘good FA Cup campaign’ for a smaller team was to battle through to the third round and land a glamorous name at home. Even better — especially in an era where club finances in football’s lower reaches are at breaking point — was for that initial tie to end in a draw, requiring a financially advantageous replay.
But the numbers show that in the past 10 seasons, that particular scenario has happened only 12 times and not since February 2020, when Shrewsbury Town of League One lost 1-0 at Anfield in a replay Klopp did not even attend — Liverpool’s then under-23s coach Neil Critchley took the team instead.
It is noticeable that all 12 of these games saw the lower league side lose, often heavily.
The numerical truth is that the vast majority of FA Cup replays are not the sort of David Travels To Goliath situation we saw when 6,000 Exeter fans went to Anfield in 2016.
If true cup memories are built on knocking out the big boys, then these numbers are telling: since 2015, there have been 22 instances of a club from League One or below knocking out a Premier League side. Fifteen of those have come with the lower-division team playing at home (two of them in replays). Statistically, a minnow’s best chance of winning is in the initial game, particularly if it’s at their place.
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It is entirely understandable that these changes to the FA Cup have sparked dismay, but meaningful structural change is surely a better ambition than hoping for the (very) occasional infusion of cash from a replay at a Premier League ground.
Spanish football overhauled its approach to the Copa del Rey, their FA Cup equivalent, in 2019.
One change included the introduction of seeding, ensuring the lowest-ranked teams remaining in the competition are handed home draws against the highest-placed ones.
At this season’s last-32 stage, Arandina and Barbastro — the only two fourth-tier sides left — were drawn at home against Real Madrid and Barcelona respectively. The remaining 13 teams from the second and third divisions all got home matches against La Liga sides, with the remaining La Liga clubs being drawn against each other.
The heavily-formatted design is maintained through to the stage — usually the quarter-finals — when all lower-division sides have been eliminated, at which point the draw becomes open.
This forced nature of the draw is imperfect — one theory is the elite are afforded a theoretically ‘easier’ path against opponents from down the divisions while lower-ranked top-level sides eliminate each other — but the competition has become increasingly captivating and refreshing, with six different clubs winning it in the past six seasons.
Could that be the way to go in English football, too?
Additional contributors: Matt Slater, Caoimhe O’Neill, Duncan Alexander
(Top photo: Exeter Express & Echo/Getty Images)