For Premier League clubs threatened by relegation, January’s offering of FA Cup football usually falls into one of two categories.
It can serve as a reprieve from the troubling plight of a relegation battle, a chance to rediscover lost form and restore dented confidence. On the other hand it can be bracketed as a distraction: teams already failing to compete on one front should hardly benefit from battling it out on another.
Analysing the records of Premier League clubs who were in the bottom five prior to the third round taking place over the previous 10 seasons has shown teams who played three games or fewer in the FA Cup stand better survival prospects than those who featured in four or more.
The fourth round will be played out over this coming weekend with such delights as Cambridge United v Manchester United.
Since the 2004/05 season 58 per cent of teams in the bottom five who played three FA Cup games or fewer went on to secure their Premier League status, compared to just 33 per cent of the teams who played four or more matches in the competition.
The most recent team to have bucked this trend are Sunderland, who were bottom of the league last season when the third round began but benefited from an extended cup run to the quarter-finals, where they were beaten by eventual finalists Hull. It could be argued that Sunderland’s confidence-restoring run aided them in the league, where they ended the season in 14th place.
However it is much more common for a struggling side to fail to capitalise on even the most impressive cup form. Two years ago Wigan went all the way to the final and ended up winning the competition, yet they could not reproduce that form in the league and were relegated.
For West Brom, Crystal Palace and Leicester – the three teams still left in the competition who occupied spots in the bottom five prior to the third round kicking off – there is a message to take home: more often than not a prolonged cup run will not prove beneficial to Premier League survival.
Source: SNAPPA
