The Great FA Cup Replays Controversy of 2024
The furore over the abolition of FA Cup replays has led to an awful lot of nonsense being talked.
Throw in a generous dose of dishonesty, the selective application of memory and the accumulation of years of suspicion and frustration and you’ve got a perfect storm.
The narrative that’s got everyone going is that the top six Premier League clubs have decided to cut FA cup replays without asking anyone else apart from the FA, who have been bought off. That would be outrageous were it true. But it’s not. So look away now if you don’t want facts to spoil your outrage.
The possibility that all replays would be axed was first raised well over a year ago, and potential problems with the revised fixture calendar this season were referenced in the report of one of the structured dialogue meetings between supporter reps and the FA last October. There is a line in there following on from a paragraph about broadcast rights that says “the separate but conflated issue of the revised fixture calendar for the 2024/25 season onwards and its potential impact on the FA Cup competition format was also raised, with no conclusions yet agreed with the EFL and Premier League.” If this was being discussed with supporter reps you can be damn sure it was being discussed with clubs.
Note that there was “no conclusion yet agreed with the EFL and Premier League”. That means that the EFL and Premier League must have been discussing the specific issue of changes to the format of the FA Cup. And yet when it was announced, on 18 April 2024, that FA Cup replays were to go from the 2024-25 season, the EFL was quick to say there had been no consultation. This was subsequently clarified to say there had been no formal consultation. And further clarified to say that EFL reps had been in meetings where the axing of replays was discussed but no agreement had been reached. And further clarified to say that agreement to changes to the FA Cup format “in isolation” had not been reached.
The EFL’s apparent difficulty in making itself clear does raise questions about whether it really understood the implications of what was being discussed. Communication has been pretty terrible all round, but the EFL and senior figures within it have variously said they didn’t know anything about scrapping replays, that it was never discussed, and that it was discussed but at a different meeting that meant it wasn’t really discussed as it should be.
Finally, if we are to believe a quote in the Daily Mail, we get a bit closer to what might have actually happened. “EFL bosses say they only gave their approval on the basis that the axing of replays from the first round would be part of the still-outstanding financial resettlement with the top flight.”
That’s a long way from ‘we knew nothing about this’, but it is plausibly closer to the truth. The EFL, it seems, was prepared to trade replays for a decent financial settlement from the Premier League. It didn’t get that settlement, and is now facing criticism from member clubs who say they weren’t consulted. In order to deflect some flak, and to try to regain some leverage in its discussions over a financial settlement, the EFL is sticking it to the bad guys of the FA and PL.
Now, I’m not denying that either the FA or the PL are easy targets, but in this case they may not be the bad guys. The FA, let’s remember, voted against the expansion of European club competition that has led to the pressure on the calendar. Having lost the vote, the reality is that it has to fit domestic competitions in with that expanded European calendar. It’s not a position it wanted to be in, I’m sure, but once in it, it has to deal with it. And what no one currently howling about the end of replays can do is suggest when exactly those replays should take place.
I have heard a lot about how all the talk about player welfare is total hypocrisy because the clubs will fly off on lucrative close season tours so why not use that time for replays. But I don’t yet understand how it would be possible to schedule replays in the close season and still run a viable competition. Unless people are talking about extending the season. Which brings its own problems.
At the root of this whole hoo-haa is a profound mistrust of football’s decision-makers, who may well be asking ‘why does everyone always think the worst of us?’ To which my answer would be ‘Yes, why do they? Have a think.’
What I learned during my time as a Supporters Trust co-chair going into meetings with many football people is that it was usually wise to check your watch if they said “Good morning”. I should stress that there are many good people who want good things working within the game, but there are too many who have perfected the art of being disingenuous, who are happy to let people believe one thing about a conversation while quietly moving on with quite a different interpretation. And there seems to me to be an awful lot of that going on here.
Add that into the undoubted greed that drives much of the approach of the clubs at the top, the utterly distorted business model of the English game, and the sheer wrongness of some of the decisions made by those who are supposed to be custodians of the game and it’s little wonder that people are ready to believe the worst, and that The Great Replays Controversy happened.
In this case, I don’t think the FA are the bad guys. The organisation’s problem is, despite it saying the FA Cup is its crown jewel and that it understands the iconic nature of the brand, that it’s done quite a lot to tarnish that reputation already. The agreement just announced goes some way towards putting some of that right – getting rid of the midweek round, having focussed FA Cup weekends, giving the final its own day free of distraction. It also gets rid of replays because no one has come up with a time in which they could be played.
One of the big objections is that removing replays takes away the chance for a lower league club to get a lucrative payday at a bigger club’s bigger stadium. But that doesn’t happen very often, and holding this up as a key business argument just underlines how broken the football business is. If you ran a business and you were given a choice between receiving a guaranteed sum of not very much every year or taking the chance of a very big sum maybe once in a generation, what would you take?
I’ve heard some say that argument ignores the romance, the experience of – to take a recent example – 15,000 Leyton Orient fans at Arsenal’s stadium in a cup replay. And I’d have to agree, removing replays removes that chance of romance. But if you want to talk about romance, isn’t a lower league team more likely to pull off a shock over one game rather than two?
There’s always a risk of being the person who killed Bambi when you counter a romantic argument of any sort, and God knows over the years I’ve argued plenty of times that football needs to understand the soul as well as the balance sheet. But the fact is that while a few replay nights stand out, the numbers show they are more often not well attended, money-spinning upsets don’t happen often and – although they won’t admit it now – some EFL clubs themselves wanted rid of replays because of the financial cost and risk to smaller playing squads.
Fifth round replays went in 2018, but you wouldn’t believe it from some of what’s been said. That was part of the chipping away of the Cup’s traditions, and also prompted by fixture congestion concerns. Of course the bigger clubs want more European games and fewer pesky domestic cup games. (And that includes more than the top six, by the way). Of course the Premier League tried to work this to its advantage. And so, of course, did the EFL – which incidentally is outraged that fixture congestion has led to this but not sufficiently outraged to agree to drop the relatively recently adopted two-legged semi-final format of its own cup competition. It needs the money, donchaknow. Well, doesn’t everyone?
Fans have consistently said they favour retaining replays, and that’s a position I broadly agree with. But given the calendar as it is, I can’t see where they would go. I suspect a financial settlement will finally be agreed that keeps everyone happy, which I know sounds cynical but that’s the only option because – and sorry for repeating myself – there isn’t any date on which replays could be scheduled.
It's been an instructive episode. Partly because it is fascinating to watch so many people project their particular dissatisfaction onto the story and make it their own. And partly because the sight of the three largest football authorities in England knocking seven bells out of each other just days before a Parliamentary debate on regulating football makes the case for that regulator so very, very well.