Oxford v Arsenal: Arsenal in the FA Cup and the current form

 

• Oxford United v Arsenal: the past and the present and what they foretell

With one win in the league in the last five games, and that against Charlton who hadn’t won any of their previous nine games in league and cup, Oxford’s form of late has not been overly impressive.  But as we are always told by journalists who can’t be arsed to do any research, anything can happen in the cup.

And although football journalists will always bring up Arsenal’s defeat under Herbert Chapman to Walsall (without giving any details of what actually happened in what was an utterly extraordinary sent of events – largely because that would spoil the story) Arsenal haven’t been involved in that many upsets across the centuries.

The biggest shock other than Walsall, (which actually wasn’t a shock when one considers the conditions, which included supporters being on the pitch throughout most of the match, because too many were in the ground and so they spilled over onto the touchline and beyond), was the defeat to Wrexham in 1992.

But beyond this, what gets a lesser mention is the fact that far from being down-and-out and likely to be beaten by anyone in the FA Cup Arsenal is in fact the most successful FA Cup team of all time.  Here’s a table of the most successful FA Cup teams; we’ve been in 21 finals and won 14 of them.

We only go down to Tottenham Hotspur in this table because after that we get to lesser team which have won the FA Cup under half as many times as Arsenal, so it seems a bit pointless.

 

Club	Wins	First final won	Last final won	Total final appearances
Arsenal	14	1930	2020	21
Manchester United	12	1909	2016	20
Chelsea	8	1970	2018	16
Liverpool	8	1965	2022	15
Tottenham Hotspur	8	1901	1991	9

 

Which makes it all the more strange, given the way the media focuses on a couple of unexpected defeats when thinking about Arsenal in the FA Cup, rather than focusing on the much more obvious fact that this is the most successful FA Cup club of all time.

Indeed if you want to go further you’ll see that two of the four clubs who have won more than 50% of the cups Arsenal have won started winning before the first world war – which means that they have much, much longer than Arsenal to try and win the thing.   And beyond that, in the early days, there were far fewer clubs in the FA Cup, and therefore far fewer matches to play.

Last season was, however a disappointment for us in the FA Cup, as Arsenal went out against Nottingham Forest in the third round.  It was part of a run in which Forest only had four defeats in 28 games, and eventually won promotion through the play offs.  For Arsenal it was part of a run of no wins in five games, so quite a contrast in the way the teams felt, I suspect.  Arsenal’s priority at the time was to try and get a top four place at the end of the season.

Arsenal were fourth at the time, but Tottenham were only two points behind and with two games in hand.  The FA Cup seemed a total distraction to the main programme, and so it turned out to be.

Arsenal’s line up for that match was

Leno

Soares Holding Tavares White

Saka Odegaard Patino Logonga

Martinelli Nketiah

and the results around this time were

 

 

Indeed this was the third of four really bad runs Arsenal had (five bad runs if you include the two away defeats in May.  We’ve not seen any such runs this season, our last four games being wins against Wolverhampton, West Ham., Brighton and Hove and then the draw with Newcastle.   Goals for nine, goals against three.

Oxford’s last four games have been defeats to Ipswich and Exeter, a draw with Sheffield Wednesday and a win against 12th-placed Charlton.   But to give them their due in 1964 Oxford became the first Fourth Division club to reach the sixth round of the FA Cup.

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