Alex Keble: This season's FA Cup looks set to deliver some magic

By Alex Keble

Football

Sat January 11, 2025 · 2M ago

Play the VTs of bygone shocks, celebrate ol’ big ears, and warm your cockles with the nation’s favourite day of the sporting calendar. The FA Cup third round is upon us again, so it’s time to grit your teeth and lean into the magic of the cup.

Third round weekend is a lot like Christmas. It’s either sincerely your favourite day of the sporting year, a rude and inconvenient interruption to your usual routine, or, more likely, it falls somewhere between the two as age and cynicism grinds you down. It just isn’t what it used to be, is it?

Except that this year something of the old magic is stirring. Maybe it’s just that Liverpool are running away with the Premier League title, making the FA Cup a more welcome break than usual.

Maybe it’s that the third round draw was particularly romantic this year, a perfect blend of David versus Goliath games (Tamworth v Tottenham, Newcastle v Bromley), giant-killing potential (Manchester City v Salford, Everton v Peterborough), and a Sunday topper in Arsenal v Manchester United.

No, that’s not it either. If there is excitement building for the return of the FA Cup it’s that the cup competitions in England have been reignited in recent years.

Newcastle United’s 2-0 victory at the Emirates on Tuesday evening was one of the highlights of the 2024/25 calendar so far, the celebrations at the end emphasising just how much winning silverware would mean to supporters – and emphasising how the nation is rekindling its enjoyment after a sterile period of ‘Big Six’ domination.

Man City’s four EFL Cups in a row between 2018 and 2021 nearly killed the competition dead, and it didn’t help that they coincided with entirely unmemorable FA Cup wins for Arsenal, Chelsea, and City.

The late-stage Arsene Wenger wins are instantly forgettable, a semi-meaningless postscript that did nothing for the tournament. Man City’s 6-0 victory over Watford was a low point for the competition. And does anybody remember an Eden Hazard penalty beating Man Utd in 2018, or that Antonio Conte had even won the competition?

But thankfully the last few years have been resurgent: Mikel Arteta winning a first trophy with Arsenal, Leicester capping their fairy-tale journey with that Youri Tielemans goal, Man City completing the middle section of their treble, and Man Utd defying the odds to save Erik ten Hag’s job.

It isn’t exactly magic, but it’s intrigue, purpose. And it kicks up a notch this year.

Tottenham, Man Utd, and Man City are in various stages of crisis and could do with an FA Cup victory to reset the narrative. Ange Postecoglou always wins something in his second year, as he keeps telling us; Ruben Amorim threatens to lose momentum before it even started; and Pep Guardiola still looks like a man contemplating his future.

Liverpool are favourites for obvious reasons, and yet the Premier League’s unusual equality of talent this season suggests this could be the year an outsider wins.

FA Cup 24/25 winner odds (via Sky Bet)

Manchester City - 10/3
Liverpool - 5/1
Arsenal, Chelsea - 7/1
Newcastle - 11/1
Manchester United, Tottenham - 12/1
Aston Villa - 16/1
20/1 bar

Odds correct at 1450 (08/01/25)

Only three times this century has the FA Cup been won by a club that didn’t also finish in the top six – Portsmouth in 2008 (8th), Wigan in 2013 (18th), and Leicester in 2021 (8th) – but rarely has it looked more on the cards than in this weirdly compressed season in England’s top flight.

Nottingham Forest, Bournemouth, Fulham, Brighton, and Brentford must all feel they have a reasonable chance of winning six FA Cup matches and lifting the trophy, and that’s before you get to Newcastle or Aston Villa (who last won the FA Cup in 1955 and 1957 respectively).

Arteta could do with another FA Cup victory to keep the project on course. Enzo Maresca’s young Chelsea side need to win something before they have the steel for a title challenge, and with Liverpool chasing multiple trophies that means every single potential FA Cup winner is attached to a story.

So, crank up the highlight reels, put the tinfoil trophy on the mantelpiece, and get into the FA Cup spirit.

It’s going to be a good one.

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