Newport

[Robin]

Currently holding arguably the best football team England has ever seen to a 0-0 draw and could have gone ahead if it were not for a quality save. They've also made circa £2million in the last two years from the FA Cup. With all of that I can't help but think why are we so bad in the FA Cup?

[Ralph]

How can anyone play on that pitch though? It's a real quality leveler

[Robin]

Very true but in all the years I've followed us our record in the FA cup with the exception of that one season under SC has been shocking. IF we want to get the club back on track and eventually get back into league one we need a good cup run.

[RegencyCheltenhamSpa]

This year in the FA Cup, the team which progresses the furthest from each league in the EFL wins £250k. A great incentive for us to try and be the last one standing from L2. Would benefit us more than promotion imo.

[Ben3]

Just by memory, since 1998 (21 seasons) we’ve played Newcastle, everton, Spurs, Fulham and West Brom in the FA cup. So that’s one ‘big’ game every five seasons....have I missed any?

[Robin]

How many cup upsets have we had, the last one was probably Burnley almost twenty years ago. In contrast Newport have had five of those "big" games in the last two years being Leeds, Spurs, Boro, Leicester and City today.

[SHANDY VOR]

If you were to win some of them then you would get more of the big games, that's how the cup works Robin.

[Robin]

That's precisely my point our record in the cup is generally woeful, we tend to beat the lower placed sides and lose as soon as we meet anyone from higher up the pyramid. Was Burnley really the last time we pulled off a cup upset?

[RegencyCheltenhamSpa]

That's precisely my point our record in the cup is generally woeful, we tend to beat the lower placed sides and lose as soon as we meet anyone from higher up the pyramid. Was Burnley really the last time we pulled off a cup upset?

Woeful compared to what? Given you would expect a top flight side to beat a L2 or L1 side 99 times out of 100, losing five out of five, with a Bob Taylor away from drawing one of them, is exactly what one would expect. Hardly woeful.

We have beaten a few L1 sides whilst being in L2 as well so on the whole I think our cup efforts have been bang on as expected rather than woeful - aside from the failures vs non-leaguers of course.

Swindon the most recent maybe, with the 5-0 win against a team from a higher division before sacking the manager and bringing one in who lost to a non-league side.

[Ben3]

That’s what I was getting at rcs - what would constitute ‘good’ or ‘woeful’? One in four seasons (my maths was wrong!) for a really big tie seems entirely reasonable to me...as does the reciprocal annoyance of being dumped out by lower league teams sometimes.

I wonder if there is a bit of ‘lottery syndrome’ in robin’s thinking? Someone wins it each week (ok, MOST weeks) and we hear about it so our perception of winning it is higher than if the news focussed on the millions of people who DIDNT win it?

If one team out league one, two or conference beats a top two-tier team in a season it’s big news. If ctfc do that once every 50 years I reckon that’s about statistically good

(And don’t forget, the media hype the ‘unpredictability of the FA cup when, same as prem league, only one of three or four teams has any chance of winning it. Thus the focus on the very VERY rare result against form.)

[Robin]

Woeful in terms of a) lack of cup upsets and b) overall money made. I must admit I thought Swindle were in the same league as us at the time so I stand corrected there. The one obvious outlier was the 5th round cup run and that coincided with league two gates of 4500+ on a Tuesday night and 7000 on a Saturday (albeit whilst we challenge for promotion). My point being is we seem to never get the rub of the green (I wouldn't really call Fulham or Everton big gates because we didn't make much financially those seasons).

[Nesty]

when we got to the 5th round, there were only two non Premiership teams left in the draw - us and WBA

[Sprout Picker]

when we got to the 5th round, there were only two non Premiership teams left in the draw - us and WBA

Don't think that's correct Nesty. A quick look shows Crewe, Tranmere, PNE and Walsall all in the fifth round in 2002. West Brom were the only non-Premier League team to get through.

[asl]

I always believed that, too, Nesty - but someone here showed that was untrue. A good example of The Mandela Effect in action! I think what it was, was that by the time our ball came out, there was only WBA left as a non-Prem team.

[Nesty]

I always believed that, too, Nesty - but someone here showed that was untrue. A good example of The Mandela Effect in action! I think what it was, was that by the time our ball came out, there was only WBA left as a non-Prem team.

oops

[RegencyCheltenhamSpa]

Woeful in terms of a) lack of cup upsets and b) overall money made. I must admit I thought Swindle were in the same league as us at the time so I stand corrected there. The one obvious outlier was the 5th round cup run and that coincided with league two gates of 4500+ on a Tuesday night and 7000 on a Saturday (albeit whilst we challenge for promotion). My point being is we seem to never get the rub of the green (I wouldn't really call Fulham or Everton big gates because we didn't make much financially those seasons).

So out of five L2 vs Prem games, how many would you want the L2 sides to win before not classing it as woeful?

[Robin]

How many goals have we scored, how many times other than Fulham and Newcastle have we have won praise for our performance? The Everton performance especially was bad.

[Ben3]

I know this is slightly off topic but as we get to the last eight of this ‘UNPREDICTABLE’ FA cup season the eight will include the 1st, 4th (or 6th), 7th, 8th, 13th and 14th teams from the top flight. Plus two teams from the bottom half of the championship.

If Man City don’t get drawn v utd/Chelsea beforehand then they will certainly meet in the final

[Shade]

How many standard League 2 sides (ie, not the likes of Coventry or anyone else that has dropped down lower than they should be and gone straight back up) have done what Robin is asking in the last 20 years? Not many, I bet. Newport and a couple of others in all that time, maybe.

[Si Robin]

I started looking at this earlier and I went from our first Football League season.

Sticking strictly to League 2 v Premier League I managed to find the following:

99/00 - Exeter 0-0 Everton - Everton won the replay
01/02 - Shrewsbury 2-1 Everton
03/04 - Kidderminster 1-1 Wolves - Wolves won the replay
05/06 - Fulham 1-2 Leyton Orient
10/11 - Stevenage 3-1 Newcastle
11/12 - Swindon 2-1 Wigan
15/16 - Exeter 2-2 Liverpool - Liverpool won the replay
15/16 - Wycombe 1-1 Villa - Villa won the replay
15/16 - Oxford 3-2 Swansea
16/17 - Liverpool 0-0 Plymouth - Liverpool won the replay
17/18 - Notts County 1-1 Swansea - Swansea won the replay 8-1
17/18 - Newport 1-1 Spurs - Spurs won the replay
18/19 - Newport 2-1 Leicester

It's extremely possible I've missed some, but I make that 13 draws or better in 20 seasons. No League 2 club won a replay against Premier League opposition.

That also doesn't include games, like ours against Fulham where we lost with practically the last kick.

[Ben3]

Good work Si

13 in 20 seasons from 24 teams

I make that 1 in about 700