Is It More Risky to Bet On the FA CUP?
The FA Cup has been around since 1871 and is the oldest football competition in existence.
What I love about the FA Cup is that it features lower league teams who can battle it out with the big teams in the Premier League. Teams can play all the way down to level 9 of the English Football League.
For this reason you can have big teams battling it out with smaller clubs. We saw this recently in a Manchester Derby, with Manchester City beating Salford City 8-0.
At first glance such games could seem like an obvious winning opportunity. However the odds were only 1.08 for this bet.
It is also not out of the question for the favourite to lose. Favourites, Arsenal recently lost out to Manchester United on penalties despite being 1.67 odds favourites to win the game.
Above can happen when two Premier League clubs meet, but can it also happen with bigger discrepancies in clubs from different ranking leagues?
The answer is always YES. In betting anything can happen. And just as with all betting, betting on the FA Cup is risky.
Just recently Championship club Plymouth beat Premier League club Brentford at odds of 12/1!
Of course favourites still win these games but what I think makes the FA Cup more risky to bet on is that you have less statistical data to use.
Unlike league football with the FA Cup the teams may not have played together for years. There is no league data to use to help predict the outcome.
Also we cannot guarantee the big clubs will field a strong team. They often care more about the EPL or champions league than the FA Cup and will need to rest players.
Also with any competition game it is different to a league game as if you lose you are knocked out. This is completely different psychologically to a lose merely meaning you don’t win points.
These factors make predicting the FA Cup games more tricky. Is this reflected in the odds? Yes, it will be to a certain extent. The FA Cup odds largely keep the odds on the big teams extremely tight. You would only get 1.03 on Liverpool beating Accrington Stanley. They did win 4-0 but it hardly seems worth it.
A more interesting approach may be to go with the underdog to get bigger odds. For the astute football bettor backing Tamworth to draw (in normal time) with Tottenham would have given you a whopping 25/1 payout.
There is an element of pot luck with the FA Cup. Betting on the big teams to beat little clubs seems like the returns will not be worth the risk. You can try the reverse and bet on the small clubs to beat the big clubs but that statistics show that the big clubs win more. Arsenal have won it more times than anyone, Man Utd are second in successes. You do get some fairytale results for smaller clubs such as Lincoln making the quarter finals in 2017.
The FA Cup is a fun competition to watch, but given its unpredictability, bet with caution and avoid short odds bets for next to nothing. There may be some scope for backing huge outsiders but it comes with a big risk of defeat. Not for the feint-hearted!
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