FA Cup Betting 2009

As this years FA Cup heads towards its final stages as the semi finals draw close, we take a weather eye at the teams that remain in contention to lift the world’s most famous football trophy and make a case for their defences. And possibly attacking options too. Having already seen its fair share of thrills and spills, there’s plenty of fun still to be had before the curtain finally comes down after the showpiece Wembley event on Sunday May 30th 2009. As three of the predictable big four square up to each other, only 1995 winners Everton stand in the way of breaking the stranglehold that Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal have had on the cup in recent times, excepting the team that the Toffee’s disposed of back in round four, Liverpool.

FA Cup Football Bets

However free betting fans can always rely on the FA Cup to upset the footballing form book each year, as one plucky none league upstart or another carve out a name for themselves in the bleary-eyed romantic folklore of the beautiful game. Sadly their often quirky names never trouble the FA’s official cup inscriber, as their Herculean efforts peter out a while before said metalwork artisan has to reach for his A-Z of Great Britain atlas to determine how ‘so-and-so-by-the-duck pond Athletic’ is actually spelt.

FA Cup History

Yet as the rounds unfold, carpenters and double-glazing salesmen by day - and potential giant-killing football plotters by 2 nights a week (who’ve honed their skills on the astro-turf of the local recreation centre) - duly make a name for themselves and their village team by daring to take the fight to the big boys, on many an occasion unnerving the Premiership’s ultimate show boaters. Before they come back down to earth (and their regional Safestyle UK showroom) on a Monday morning in late January.

But this is the history making that the FA Cup is built on, and why it enjoys such acclaim, following, adoration and obsession not just here in the UK, but across the globe as Football Betting fans far and wide gather around their TV sets and radios from August to May and tune in to what is universally acknowledged to be one of the world’s greatest sporting occasions. And that’s because there’s not many events of this magnitude that could (effectively) witness a battle royal betwixt amateur and professional football clubs divided by so much more than a hundred or so league places. When the likes of Kettering Town (one of the 2008/2009 season’s lower league David’s) take on (with all due respect) its polar opposite in the guise of say, a global sporting phenomenon such as the Goliath-like Manchester United, league placings are only just the tip of the iceberg.

Fan base, financial structure, sponsorship, stadia and accumulative wealth as a whole are not so much at different ends of the spectrum as entirely different planets, and that’s before you even begin to asset strip the squad and the manufacturer’s models that can be found at the training ground car parks. And a WAG is something their dogs do when greeting their footballing journeyman owner, and not the source of the constant drain on their weekly pay cheques.

However, that’s the exact point. That’s what stands at the crux of the matter. The underlying, unswerving fact that the FA Cup actually, physically, commercially allows the perceived footballing minnows, the glorified Sunday league teams of England to stand shoulder to shoulder with the cream of the English game once in their lives. A day when for 90 minutes every kid who’s ever kicked a ball down a terrace-lined street can dream the virtually impossible dream that their father dreamt before them.

FA Cup 2009 Season

Anyway, before we dissolve into a melancholy Hovis ad, let’s have a quick recap of what’s already been and gone thus far in the 2008/09 FA Cup season (and therein the free bet opportunities you may have passed up), and more importantly look ahead at what’s still to be dished up (and therefore consider a punt over) as we head towards the later stages of the competition.

FA CUP 2008/09 FIRST ROUND

Early on in this year’s FA Cup, AFC Wimbledon – a fiercely independent team that arose (with the help of its loyal supporters) from the ashes of the former Wimbledon FC; which if you recall upped sticks from its Plough Lane ground and de-camped/was re-born under the moniker of Milton Keynes Dons’ – made it’s inaugural mark on the FA Cup map. With the original ‘Crazy Gang’s’ name having been engrained in FA Cup pantheons after the heroic exploits of Lawrie Sanchez and his marauding musketeers at the expense and embarrassment of the might Liverpool back in 1988, AFC Wimbledon as yet isn’t a name associated with giant-killing, yet some 20 years since that shock cup final result, they opened their own FA Cup account as they disposed of Maidstone United of the Ryman league in the Fourth Qualifying Round to get to the first round proper.

Elsewhere another timely footballing blast from the past were making similar headlines for themselves as the part-timers of Blue Square League North’s Blyth Spartans turned back the clock and attempted to recreate the fairytale run they famously pieced together back in the 1977/78 season - when they were eventually toppled by Wrexham in the fifth round of the cup – by beating League Two’s Shrewsbury Town 3 – 1.

FA CUP SECOND ROUND

As tradition wouldn’t entertain it any other way, another none league outfit got in on the act during the second round of the FA Cup as Unibond Division Premier League Eastwood Town got the better of then League Two pace-setters Wycombe Wanderers courtesy of a brace of goals and no reply from their more illustrious visitors. Histon (of the Blue Square Premier League) also made their presence felt as they beat free falling League One side Leeds United by a goal to nil, whilst Conference side Forest Green brought a premature end to League Two Rochdale’s interest in the cup with a two goal haul and Barrow FC of the Unibond Northern Premier put two over League Two Brentford.

FA CUP THIRD ROUND

Forest Green Rovers were chief flag fliers for the none league hopefuls during the third round as they gamely lost 3 – 4 to Derby County at home, as Hartlepool United dispensed of Stoke City to create their own talking points amongst pundits trying to identify slightly less outlandish outside prospects that might just continue to cause upsets amongst the footballing hierarchy and put together an altogether more tangible cup run. Nottingham Forest – a club steeped in accumulative successes both home and abroad during the 1970s and 1980s under the guidance of a certain Brian Clough – also began making people sit up and take note as they saw off moneybags Manchester City of the Premiership with a 3-0 drubbing at Eastlands.

FA CUP FOURTH ROUND

Brave Kettering Town – the lowest position club left in the hunt for glory at this stage – finally bowed out of the competition after going down 2 – 4 against Fulham to conclude the interests of those teams remaining from outside of the top tiers of English football, whilst West Ham United ended Hartlepool’s hopes of table turning. Elsewhere and Neil Sullivan rolled back the years (and continued the now tenuous Wimbledon connections) by denying high-flying Aston Villa the spoils at the first time of asking at the Keep Moat Stadium as Doncaster Rovers clung on to force a lucrative replay.

FA CUP FIFTH ROUND

Having hitherto put paid to, well, Histon, Swansea City were tormentors in chief of current holders Portsmouth eventually running out 2 – 0 winners to set alarm bells ringing amongst English football’s so-called elite, while the clarets of Burnley gave West Bromwich Albion short shift and their goalkeeper a torrid time by putting three past him. The fifth round also signalled an end to Torquay Uniteds involvement in the cup too, as they went down one nil at the hands of Coventry City.

FA CUP SIXTH ROUND

Everton eased their way (as much as scoring one more goal than the opposition can be considered a smooth passage) past the threat of Middlesbrough chalking up a 2 – 1 win at Goodison, while Chelsea made light work of the Sky Blues, emerging two goals to the good over Coventry City when all was said and done. Having forced a replay, Arsenal brushed aside Hull’s challenge for the second time of asking, whilst the inevitable Manchester United bandwagon breezed past an ineffectual Fulham to record a 4 – 0 victory in the capital.

So now we’ve establish just which four clubs are left to contest the 2008/09 FA Cup, www.freebettingonline.co.uk takes a brief look at who’s who and what could be what come the end of May as the clock ticks down towards this year’s semi-finals and final.

With the pandemically faltering Arsenal within spitting distance of the FA Cup (Cesc Fabregas, you know who you are) surely no one is more surprised than manager (and blind eye turner extraordinaire) Arsene Wenger. Enduring the lengthy lay-offs of leg-breaking Eduardo as well as playmakers well as Fabregas and Rosiky, alongside the well-documented fall out with firebrand Will.I.Am Gallas, it’s only the timely return to fitness of Theo Walcott and the inspired acquisition of Andrey Arshashavin that has seen the Gunners finally appear to turn their flagging season around. And on their day, their blend of youthful creativity and robust experience are more than a match for anyone; providing they can keep a lid on certain player’s petulant streaks which never seem far from the surface when things don’t go all their own way.

It’s possibly pertinent to suggest - for everyone other than a battle-hardened Blues fan - that Everton may not quite harness the same imaginative hub in the core of its team as does Arsenal, although that’s as maybe, no one could argue against their stoic work ethic and never-say-die attitude to the task in hand. And after all, against the odds (and the perceived might of Manchester United) they lifted the FA Cup back in 1995 by deploying this very same mantra and belief in themselves.

But is it fair to imply that Everton are the underdogs, or the outsiders in the competition. Lest we forget they are on the back of an unbeaten eight game run and of the mentality that they fear no one, with David Moyes guilty as ever of installing more than just an ‘up and at ‘em’ morally questionable code of conduct out on the pitch by managing to get the very best out of such players as Tim Cahill and Jolean Lescott who are often given the freedom to roam and express themselves and therefore fulfil their potential.

Still, back in the real world, they face Manchester United once again. And since the day that Paul Rideout settled the FA Cup final debate of 1995 with a solitary decider, Everton have beaten the Red Devils just the once in the succeeding 14 years, and given the 4X4 cylinders that United are firing on this season, the omens are not good.

Chelsea – having parted company with Scholari early doors – are showing fleeting glimpses of the force they used to reckon with under Jose Mourhino as the domestic season draws to its climax; yet remain by and large a team perilously close to, if not past, their best before date. Stop-gap fixer-in-chief Guus Hiddink has reminded Lampard and Co of just what they can achieve with a little more application, and after the necessary kick up the jacksy – and the blistering return to action and form of midfield dynamo Michael Essien – Chelsea are finally showing flashes of the mettle and vision that wooed even some neutrals under the tutelage of the ‘special one’.

So to Manchester United, whose measured dominance this season put them on the verge of an unprecedented Quintuple of prizes, (The Premiership and Champions League – along with the FA Cup – remain firmly fixed on their radar after already securing the World Club Cup before Christmas and the Carling Cup most recently) rendering you a fool to bet against them pulling off the previously impossible.

But then that was before Liverpool halted them in their tracks last weekend by systematically exposing their frailties (yes, United have an Achilles heel, who’d have thought) in just about every quarter of the field as Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard ran amok in United’s own backyard to dish out their biggest home loss for year. The 4-1 drubbing at the hands of their bitter Merseyside rivals made every fan, pundit and man on the street rub their eyes in disbelief. And of course with that other team from Merseyside equally as adept at ‘mixing it’ with footballing royalty who’s to say that the team from Old Trafford will add a twelfth FA Cup to their tally this year.