The two threads stitching together 150 years of FA Cup final history

The first FA Cup final was played 150 years ago in 1872. Wanderers beat Royal Engineers 1-0. The next year Wanderers beat Oxford University 2-0. The third final was between the first two runners-up. Oxford University beat Royal Engineers 2-0.

Only four clubs featured in the first seven finals. Wanderers, Royal Engineers, Oxford University – and Old Etonians, who were runners-up in the fourth and fifth finals. Not until the seventh year was there a final with more than two goals, excluding extra time and replays.

Over a century and a half the FA Cup final has gone off in this direction and that direction, but two of the themes from those earliest deciders have been repeated in recent years: a small group of winners and a low number of goals.

On Saturday Chelsea will play in their fifth FA Cup final in six years. Twice their opponents were Arsenal, once Manchester United. On Saturday they will face Liverpool. Last year they met Leicester, who were high in the Premier League but not what we would call an elite club. The others are.

Add Manchester City to Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United and you have five clubs who in recent years have dominated the FA Cup. They are the Premier League’s Big Six without Tottenham.

Let us look back over the last 26 years. It might seem like an odd number to choose. In some ways it is. I could have picked other periods to illustrate the same points. But for one analysis it was easiest to settle on 26 – I will get to that in a moment.

The FA Cup has been won by one of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City or Manchester United in 23 of the last 26 years. This Saturday that will become 24 in 27. The other winners were Leicester last year, Wigan in 2013 and Portsmouth in 2008.

Nine times in those previous 26 years there was an FA Cup final like there will be this weekend – between two of the Dominant Five. In none of those nine finals were there more than three goals. Excluding extra time and penalty shootouts the average number of goals per game was 1.8.

When they played in the third round this year Chelsea and Liverpool were second and third in the Premier League. There are 20 teams in the Premier League this year, as there were in each of the previous 26 years. Fifteen times in those previous 26 years the FA Cup winners had entered when they were in the top three of the Premier League. Six times the winners had been between fourth and sixth in the Premier League, four times between seventh and tenth and once between 11th and 20th.

The FA Cup winners tended to be teams from towards the top of the Premier League, and those teams tended to be the richest and best-supported ones.

The Premier League replaced the First Division of the Football League, which was the only division when it started in 1888. There have been high-scoring FA Cup finals and there have been low-scoring FA Cup finals. More often than not, though, the FA Cup final has featured fewer goals than a typical top division game.

Because of wars, football was not played every year. Between 1888 and 2021 there were 122 seasons with both an FA Cup final and top division fixtures. In 80 of those 122 seasons the number of goals in the FA Cup final – excluding extra time, replays and penalty shootouts – was lower than the average number of goals per game in the top division. Effectively two times out of three.

Across the whole of the last 26 years the number of goals scored in normal time in FA Cup finals was 2.2. Over the preceding 26 years it was also 2.2.

There were individual years with high scores. Three years ago Manchester City beat Watford 6-0. In 2006 Liverpool shared six goals with West Ham – then beat them in a penalty shootout. There have been three other finals with six goals.

There were seven goals in 1953 when Blackpool beat Bolton 4-3, and also in 1890 when Blackburn beat The Wednesday – now Sheffield Wednesday – 6-1. The 1953 final became known as the Matthews Final because it was the only time in a career spanning 34 years that the legendary Stanley Matthews got a winners' medal.

So there were exceptions to the rule. But the rule is that FA Cup finals have tended to produce a low number of goals. And that FA Cup winners have tended to be drawn from a small group of elite clubs.

A good team can show they are wherever they play

League form has tended to translate well into FA Cup final results. I compared league records with FA Cup final scores for a period covering more than quarter of a century, and what I found was that they corresponded closely.

There were years in which a team from low in the table beat a team from high in the table – for example, in 2013 when Wigan, who were 18th, beat Manchester City, who were second. But that sort of thing happened only as often as league form suggests it should have happened. There were more years in which the team who would have seemed better before kick-off lifted the trophy after the final whistle.

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