FA Cup replays fall victim to scramble for cash and chaotic decision-making

Newport fans at Rodney Parade in 2018 during their fourth-round draw with Spurs, which earned them a replay at Wembley. Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA

If you had been following the back pages over the past few months the changes to the format of the FA Cup would not have come as a surprise. Last month the Daily Mail reported that replays were to be scrapped, and a shift in the date of the final has been mooted for longer. It says a lot about the state of football in England, however, that the news did come as a surprise to many within the game. The outrage that accompanied it was perhaps less shocking.

The game is facing governance challenges from a number of directions, some of which directly led to the new arrangements for the Cup. From next season, each of Uefa’s three club tournaments is to expand, from 32 to 36 teams, with eight fixtures for each side competing in the league phase. There will be more matches over more midweeks and room needs to be made in the calendar to accommodate them. To that effect, fewer replays for Premier League sides in January to March would be welcomed by them.

Another challenge is very much imminent. The second reading of the government’s football governance bill is expected in parliament on Tuesday. It is a big day for those who have been campaigning for a regulator, namely fan groups and the English Football League, as MPs will debate the bill’s contents and take a big step towards its transformation into law. It’s also a big moment for those who have, if not opposed, then resisted the arrival of the regulator – the Premier League and, more quietly, the Football Association. The past few weeks have brought a visible ramping up of the Premier League’s lobbying on the matter, warning of the “unintended consequences” of granting control over aspects of the game to outsiders, while also promoting the many strengths of the competition in ads on social media.

There’s a third governance problem, though, which is equally germane to this discussion and that’s the consistent and unabating financial losses being generated by clubs up and down the country. According to the respected football finance expert Kieran Maguire, Premier League clubs have reported a cumulative operational loss of £1.23bn over the past 12 months. Figures in the Championship have been just as shocking with, for example, relegated Leicester losing £89.7m in 2022-23 and mid-table Bristol City reporting a £22.2m deficit over the same period.

These losses are fundamentally influencing decision-making in football. It’s also a fair bet that the more combustible and self-interested the actions, the more likely that money is the driver. Some clubs need money to keep the wolf from the door. Others need it to justify their business model. Still more need money to be “ambitious” and up their spending to a level set by rivals. None of these perspectives create an environment conducive to sensible, strategic decision-making.

With every action taken by the custodians of the game, it can feel as if the argument for an independent regulator becomes stronger. Increasingly it looks as if the power brokers of the FA, Premier League and the EFL are unable to act together, unable to find common interest. The decision to scrap replays appears to have been characteristically chaotic, with the EFL unaware it had been taken, having expected any changes to the calendar to be wrapped into a broader deal on financial redistribution. That deal has been called for by government for two years; a month ago the Premier League said it had paused attempts to come up with an offer. The FA, meanwhile, has been desperate to reboot a tournament that generates 60% of its revenues but risks becoming something of an afterthought. And so it goes.

The regulator’s main powers will be around financial oversight and the ability to punish clubs should they fail to run their businesses sustainably. Also within its brief, however, will be the maintenance of club heritage, the symbols and traditions that have accompanied the growth of football from a Victorian amateur endeavour to the globe-bestriding giant it is today. Even if the changes to the Cup do not end up denying opportunity and revenue to clubs lower down the English pyramid, they are inarguably a strike against heritage. A sense of the old ways being lost is only accelerating.

Changes in the calendar not only clear space for European fixtures, they make more room for new, commercially-led tournaments to be played in the summer, such as Fifa’s new, expanded Club World Cup. Set to make its debut in the US next summer, this tournament is likely to be exciting, to a point, but it is not primarily a sporting endeavour. Like everything else it is a revenue-generating one, a response to football’s insatiable need for money and the grapple for power and influence that produces. There will be more to come. That old phrase “for the good of the game” may soon have to be retired.