Compare FA Cup Odds: Outright Winner Betting

Compare FA Cup betting odds 2018/19 for the outright winner from the top bookies plus claim free bets, which are on the home page of JustBookies.com.

FA Cup Odds – Match Winner Betting

To Win FA Cup In Normal Time; Best odds bold; Each-Way Place Terms: Win Only.

Man City	1/3	3/10	27/ 100	1/4	1/4	1/3	3/10
Draw	4/1	9/2	9/2	4/1	4/1	4/1	17/4
Watford	8/1	9/1	10/1	10/1	10/1	8/1	9/1

FA Cup Odds – Outright Winner Betting

To Win FA Cup 2018/19 Betting; To Lift The Trophy; Best odds bold; Each-Way Place Terms: Win Only.

Man City	1/6	1/6	1/6			1/7	1/6	1/6
Watford	4/1	4/1	4/1			9/2	7/2	4/1

Once Unpredictable, FA Cup Odds Reflect Top Teams Rule Nowadays

Chelsea defeated Manchester United in last season’s FA Cup final, and it seems likely that the 2018-19 trophy will again be lifted by one of the Premier League’s primary powers.

The FA Cup was once a pretty unpredictable competition, with varying pitch quality and less concentration of wealth at the top of the English football pyramid producing an assortment of different winners: 15 in the 26 years prior to the formation of the Premier League in 1992.

Over the course of the last 26 years, since the establishment of the new top flight, there have been just eight different winners of the FA Cup. Everton, Portsmouth and Wigan Athletic have all triumphed on one occasion, but 23 of the 26 finals have been won by five powerful teams: Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City and Manchester United and the bookies’ FA Cup odds reflect that.

In each of the last two years, the final has been contested between two of them. Add Tottenham Hotspur into the mix, and they again represent the six favourites for this year’s competition, some distance clear of any of the other top-flight sides in consideration. They are all viable winners, although much will depend on the progress they make in Europe.

It is necessary to go back to 2012 to find the last time a winner or finalist went further than the round of 16 in European competition. Indeed, just two of the last 20 finalists have managed to balance deep runs in both competitions. Even with increasingly stacked and talented squads, doing so has proved very difficult for all of England’s biggest clubs.

Arsenal have generally struggled to make significant progress in Europe in recent times, but have enjoyed success in the FA Cup, winning three times in the last five years. Those triumphs have seen them move ahead of Manchester United as the most successful team in the history of the competition, having won it on 13 occasions. Their new coach Unai Emery is somewhat of a cup specialist, and they can again be fancied to make good progress.

There have been no surprise winners of the FA Cup over the last five years, but Aston Villa, Crystal Palace and Hull City have all reached the final in that time. Likely top half and upper mid-table Premier League clubs such as Everton, Leicester City, Southampton and West Ham will all hope to put similarly strong runs together this time around. Even while battling relegation, Southampton made it through to the final four last season.

If teams outside of those in the upper reaches of the Premier League table have struggled to defeat the more established powers over the last quarter-century or so, what about those plying their trade in the lower leagues? West Ham were the last team from outside the top flight to lift the FA Cup way back in 1980. There have since been five lower-league finalists, most recently Cardiff in 2008, but none have been able to secure a famous underdog victory.

The Championship is an incredibly competitive division and it seems to be proving evermore difficult for its teams to mix a promotion push with significant progress in the FA Cup. In the last couple of seasons, no Championship side has reached the last eight.

Upsets do still happen. League One side Wigan Athletic, the last unexpected FA Cup victor as a top-flight side in 2013, eliminated Bournemouth, West Ham and even Premier League champions Manchester City en route to last season’s quarter-finals. Two seasons ago, both fifth-tier Lincoln City and League Two’s Millwall made it through to the same stage.

The preliminary qualifiers for this year’s competition get underway in August, with 644 clubs set to be whittled down to 32 over the course of six rounds. The first of those rounds is contested by teams in the ninth and 10th tiers of English football, and all of those taking part dream of somehow making it through to the third round proper and booking themselves a day out at Anfield, Old Trafford or Stamford Bridge.

As the FA Cup odds indicate, it has become somewhat predictable that one of the Premier League’s big clubs will win it, but there is certainly still magic to be found in the FA Cup for those willing to seek it out.