The Magic of Football – still there in the Cups?

It’s increasingly difficult to see any magic in the beautiful game other than black magic, especially when you look at it from a financial perspective.  You only need to think of the narrow escapes at Plymouth and Wrexham recently, and both Portsmouth and Darlington are standing on the edge of the precipice.

The Cups may be a different matter however.  Recently Louise Taylor suggested that the FA Cup Third Round had failed to cast any magic on fans (1).  Below I’ve taken her data and, in italics, added some more.  It struck me that whatever magic there might be would be associated with the possibility of a giant-killing, or, as the BBC have started to call it, a ‘cupset’.  Did the possibility of a cupset bring out the fans, especially in the case where the ‘minnow’ was playing at home.

Home Club	Tier	Away Club	Tier	Away – Home Tier	FA Cup attendance	Average league attendance	Difference
MK Dons	3	QPR	1	-2	19,506	8,217	11,289
Swindon Town	4	Wigan	1	-3	13,238	7,887	5,351
Bristol Rovers	4	Aston Villa	1	-3	10,883	6,122	4,761
Gillingham	4	Stoke	1	-3	9,872	5,482	4,390
Macclesfield Town	4	Bolton	1	-3	5,757	2,222	3,535
Fleetwood Town	5	Blackpool	2	-3	5,092	1,781	3,311
Dagenham & Redbridge	4	Millwall	2	-2	3,396	2,161	1,235
Crawley Town	4	Bristol City	2	-2	3,779	3,181	598
Brighton and Hove Albion	2	Wrexham	5	3	18,573	18,595	-22
Chelsea	1	Portsmouth	2	1	41,529	41,632	-103
Manchester City	1	Manchester United	1	0	46,808	47,013	-205
Doncaster Rovers	2	Notts County	3	1	9,535	9,750	-215
Peterborough United	2	Sunderland	1	-1	8,954	9,233	-279
Liverpool	1	Oldham	3	2	44,556	44,857	-301
Tottenham Hotspur	1	Cheltenham	4	3	35,672	36,071	-399
Sheffield Wednesday	3	West Ham	2	-1	17,916	20,041	-2,125
Barnsley	2	Swansea	1	-1	7,380	10,719	-3,339
Norwich City	1	Burnley	2	1	22,898	26,516	-3,618
Nottingham Forest	2	Leicester	2	0	18,477	22,224	-3,747
Watford	2	Bradford	4	2	8,935	12,731	-3,796
Birmingham City	2	Wolverhampton	1	-1	14,594	18,682	-4,088
Fulham	1	Charlton	3	2	20,317	25,315	-4,998
Middlesbrough	2	Shrewsbury	4	2	12,631	18,164	-5,533
Coventry City	2	Southampton	2	0	9,000	14,813	-5,813
Everton	1	Tamworth	5	4	27,564	33,407	-5,843
Reading	2	Stevenage	3	1	11,295	18,554	-7,259
Sheffield United	3	Salisbury	6	3	10,488	18,559	-8,071
Hull City	2	Ipswich	2	0	10,246	18,922	-8,676
West Bromwich Albion	1	Cardiff	2	1	12,454	24,794	-12,340
Derby County	2	Crystal Palace	2	0	10,113	26,133	-16,020
Newcastle United	1	Blackburn	1	0	30,876	48,866,	-17,990
Totals	2.29		2.32	1	522,334	602,644	-80,310

I have added the away teams, the tiers in which each team plays, and the difference between the tiers at each game.  The list has been sorted into an order from the greatest increase to the greatest drop in the number attending.

The results are not entirely surprising.  Where the home team is two or more divisions below the away team, the fans have turned out in extra numbers.  At games like Everton v. Tamworth and Sheffield United v. Salisbury, the home fans staying away outnumber any boost in the ‘minnow’s’ away following.  The two biggest differences are at matches between clubs in the same division.  Overall there is a fairly clear picture of the FA Cup lacking magic except when a home team might just cause a cupset.

Below is a graphic representation with a rather unscientific trendline.

It’s unscientific in that there are many variables at work here, including, for example, the distance away fans have to travel, and, in any case we are dealing with fairly small numbers of games.

One difficulty is that a scientific look at this phenomenon would require details of ticket allocations for away fans (and implicitly therefore home fans, given that stadium capacity is known) and the percentage of these which were sold.  Does anyone know a single source on the internet which gives these?  This would be an interesting topic for research as the outcomes would provide a basis for a scientific allocation of tickets for away fans.

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