Staff Writer Isabel Jones explores the low recorded attendances and the issues of replay games and extra-time in this season’s Third Round of the English FA Cup.
Just over 15,000 fans on a cold Saturday afternoon in North East England is not the reception that Enzo Le Fée, Sunderland’s newest loan signing from Italian side AS Roma, would have expected when he was unveiled on Teesside before the start of the Championship side’s Third Round FA Cup clash with Stoke City. This rather unusual welcome was made even worse as the promotion chasing side were defeated two-one by their opponent.
But it was also perhaps a symptom of how the world’s oldest football competition is failing. Stoke City manager Mark Robbins described the situation as an unprecedented “worry” due to there being “less people in the building than [he’d] ever seen before”.
Sunderland were not the only club to experience this worrying decline in attendance over the weekend, with Sheffield United being the first indicator that something was afoot when their clash with Cardiff City drew just over 6000 fans to Bramall Lane on Thursday night (9th January 2025). Fulham too, a Premier League side far more used to filling their ground, saw just half of their 29,000 seater stadium filled as fellow London side Watford travelled to Craven Cottage on the same night. This was repeated again for Millwall’s Monday night tie against Dagenham and Redbridge with only 5,625 fans turning up to see their team’s three-nil victory as they advanced to face Leeds United in the fourth round.
Low attendance in such a prestigious competition is certainly cause for concern but the Third Round may not be sounding those alarm bells quite so soon. There are a number of reasons that these games were so poorly attended.
The extreme cold is likely to have impacted the number of fans willing to turn out. Additionally, in the case of two of the games (Sunderland v Stoke and Sheffield United v Cardiff City), they were clashes against same league opponents that already take place twice a year, removing any allure for fans of a new surprise clash against lower or higher league opposition.
London-based teams, Fulham and Millwall, while not facing opponents in the same league, were facing teams from the same area in Watford and Dagenham, not a particularly enticing tie.
Either way, such low attendances are worrying but we will need to wait and see whether the Fourth Round ties between the 7th to 11th of February 2025 see similarly poor attendances or whether this was a small blip.
Replays or No Replays?
Low attendance wasn’t the only controversy during the FA Cup weekend as the agreement between the FA and Premier League to scrap replays took centre stage on Sunday afternoon when non-league club Tamworth took on Tottenham. The first 90 minutes were symptomatic of a truly up-and-down season so far for Tottenham with them arriving in the Midlands off the back of a big win against Liverpool in the League Cup midweek the North London side failed to truly threaten a weaker Tamworth with the game ending nil-nil.
A year ago a result such as that would have been cause for celebration for Tamworth as they would regroup and prepare to play a replay at the more than 60,000 seater Tottenham Hotspur Stadium which would have provided a much-needed cash injection for the club due to the FA Cup’s even splitting of gate receipts between clubs.
Football financial expert, Kieran Maguire, reported via X that Tamworth would have received a potential £850,000 payday if the game had gone to a replay. Instead, the already tired players had to struggle on for another 30 minutes during which they conceded three goals to Tottenham in quick succession, knocking them out of the tournament and rendering their first 90 minutes of holding on for a draw a complete waste.
The argument from the Premier League, that clubs are playing too many games certainly rings true in light of FIFA’s creation of the expanded quadrennial FIFA Club World Cup set to start in June which we have now learned will be played alongside a FIFA Intercontinental Cup in the same format as the previous Club World Cup on an annual basis.
These competitions are joined by expanded UEFA competitions with the replacement of the six game group stage with a eight game league phase and an additional two game knockout round.
The Premier League’s complaints, echoed by Player’s unions, would be given more credence if not for clubs like Tottenham having already agreed to an additional end of season friendly tour in Australia.
Is it time to scrap extra time?
After the result in Tamworth, a number of pundits and former footballers called for the elimination of extra time from the FA Cup and for drawn matches to go straight to a penalty shootout in the same manner as the Carabao Cup. Most notably, Gary Lineker on ‘The Rest is Football’ podcast he co-hosts with Alan Shearer and Micah Richards, said that “all we wanted…is a penalty shootout at the end” when discussing the Manchester United and Arsenal game.
Even before the Tamworth result, there was discussion over the possibility of scrapping extra time with Jamie Carragher calling for “extra time…to be out of football” completely on Sky Sports’ ‘Fan Debate’ the week of the FA Cup.
Proponents of the removal of extra time argue that it would be beneficial to the lower league clubs who manage to get a draw over 90 minutes with higher-level opposition. Players at a lower level are often unable to continue to compete with stronger teams and with a weaker substitute bench are not able to make the kind of impactful substitutions that a team like Tottenham might make to bring on multi-million-pound superstars like Heung-Min Son.
Penalties are often described as being a lottery, and for clubs like Tamworth might be exactly what they need and the increased chance of advancing in the competition might just make up for the lack of gate receipts from replays.
The FA Cup will return for the Fourth Round on the 7th February 2025 when Manchester United take on Leicester City live on ITV 1.
