The Greatest FA Cup Giant-Killings Ever

Every football fan in England has had the daydream. A cold January afternoon, a cramped little ground, a pitch that's more mud than grass, and a side of teachers and joiners sending a famous name home empty-handed. The greatest FA Cup giant-killings have been turning that daydream into fact for well over a century.

The 2026/27 competition is already under way. This is the 146th FA Cup, with 743 clubs entered, and the fourth qualifying round on Saturday 17 October settles the 32 non-League survivors. Giant-killing season proper starts with the first round proper on Saturday 7 November, and the Premier League and Championship clubs walk in at the third round on 9 January 2027.

Manchester City are the holders and are chasing a fifth straight final. That tells you how hard the big clubs usually are to shift. Usually. Here are the Cup's greatest upsets, and what each one says to a bettor about pricing an underdog.

"Oh what a goal! Radford the scorer. Ronnie Radford! And the crowd are on the pitch."
— John Motson, BBC, Hereford United v Newcastle United, 1972

Hereford United were Southern League part-timers when they drew Newcastle United in the third round of 1971/72. They scored inside the first minute at St James' Park and came away with a 2-2 draw. The weather pushed the Edgar Street replay back several times, and when it finally went ahead on 5 February 1972 the pitch was a bog, the BBC cameras were in, and a young John Motson had the microphone.

Newcastle looked to have done the professional job when they went 1-0 up in the last ten minutes. Then Ronnie Radford, a joiner by trade, played a one-two with Brian Owen and hit a 30-yard strike that sent the crowd pouring onto the pitch. Substitute Ricky George won it in extra time. Hereford 2, Newcastle 1.

Most people misremember one detail: Radford's goal wasn't the winner. It didn't need to be. It became the first FA Cup goal voted Goal of the Season and ran for years in the Match of the Day titles. Radford died in November 2022, aged 79.

Colin Addison's side went out to West Ham in a fourth-round replay, then got elected to the Football League that summer in place of Barrow. One statistical estimate, quoted by BetMGM UK, put Hereford's chances of beating Newcastle at 1 in 32,449. That's a model's number, not a price anyone actually laid.

The top two divisions join at the third round, and that's where the Cup keeps most of its best stories. Two of the very finest arrived within three years of each other.

Sutton United 2-1 Coventry City, 7 January 1989

Coventry had lifted the FA Cup less than two years earlier and were a top-flight side with Cyrille Regis up front. Sutton had started back in the fourth qualifying round, getting past Walton & Hersham, Dagenham and Aylesbury United. Tony Rains and Matthew Hanlan scored at Gander Green Lane, and manager Barrie Williams, an English teacher, had a lesson plan nobody could top.

There's another side to that coin. In 1970 Sutton hosted Don Revie's Leeds United, a team of 11 full internationals, with 14,000 squeezed into the same ground. Leeds won 6-0.

Wrexham 2-1 Arsenal, 4 January 1992

Arsenal were the reigning champions and had lost just one league game in 1990/91. Wrexham had finished bottom of the whole Football League the season before and only stayed up because the league was expanding. Their manager knew exactly how it looked.

"On paper they should murder us, but the match isn't being played on paper."
— Brian Flynn, Wrexham manager, before Wrexham v Arsenal, January 1992

Alan Smith put Arsenal ahead two minutes before the break. Then Mickey Thomas, aged 37, smashed in a 25-yard free kick on 82 minutes, and two minutes later Steve Watkin turned in Gordon Davies' ball for the winner in front of 13,343 at the Racecourse Ground. George Graham called it his "lowest moment in football". Like Hereford, Wrexham then went out to West Ham in a fourth-round replay.

Giant-killings tend to happen at tight grounds in front of small crowds. These two happened on the biggest stage English football has.

Wimbledon 1-0 Liverpool, 14 May 1988

Liverpool had just won their 17th league title and were going for a second Double. Wimbledon had finished seventh in only their second top-flight season, and 11 years earlier they'd been a Southern League club. Lawrie Sanchez headed in a Dennis Wise free kick on 37 minutes, and on the hour Dave Beasant saved John Aldridge's penalty, the first spot kick ever saved in a Wembley FA Cup final.

Motson supplied the line of the day: "The Crazy Gang have beaten the Culture Club." According to BetMGM UK, Wimbledon went off at around 4/1, a price that had come in after they drew 1-1 at home to Liverpool earlier that season and nearly nicked a point at Anfield.

Wigan Athletic 1-0 Manchester City, 11 May 2013

Wigan were 18th in the Premier League, 40 points behind second-placed City, and had lost the last seven league meetings. Pablo Zabaleta went off for a second yellow, Callum McManaman ran City ragged, and a minute into stoppage time Ben Watson headed in Shaun Maloney's corner.

City sacked Roberto Mancini two days later. Three days after the final, Wigan lost 4-1 to Arsenal and went down, the first club to win the FA Cup and be relegated in the same season. Pre-match prices reported in May 2013 had Wigan anywhere from roughly 7/1 (8.00, per OddsShark via SB Nation) to 10/1 (per BetMGM UK), depending on where you shopped.

On 24 January 2015, Chelsea sat top of the Premier League, five points clear. Bradford City were sixth in League One, 49 places below them. José Mourinho said beforehand that losing would be a "big disgrace", and after 38 minutes, with Gary Cahill and Ramires on the scoresheet, it looked like a throwaway line.

Jon Stead pulled one back before half-time. Filipe Morais levelled on 75 minutes, Andy Halliday put Bradford in front on 82, and Mark Yeates chipped Petr Čech four minutes into stoppage time. Chelsea 2, Bradford 4, in front of 41,014. It was Chelsea's first home defeat of the season and the end of their quadruple talk.

Phil Parkinson's side had company that weekend. Middlesbrough won at Manchester City, Manchester United were held 0-0 at Cambridge United and Liverpool were held 0-0 by Bolton. Upsets come in clusters, and a single round can trip up several favourites at once.

The headline stories get the documentaries, but the Cup's back catalogue goes a lot deeper. Every one of these deserves a spot in the pub argument.

Tie	Round and date	Why it matters
Tottenham Hotspur, 1900/01	Cup winners	The only non-League side ever to win the FA Cup
Yeovil Town 2-1 Sunderland	4th round, 1948/49	Southern League side beat a top-flight team
Sunderland 1-0 Leeds United	Final, 1973	Second Division winners; Ian Porterfield scored
West Brom 2-4 Woking	3rd round, 5 Jan 1991	Isthmian League side won at The Hawthorns
Shrewsbury 2-1 Everton	3rd round, 4 Jan 2003	Bottom of the Football League; Nigel Jemson scored twice
Man Utd 0-1 Leeds United	3rd round, 3 Jan 2010	League One Leeds won at Old Trafford
Stevenage 3-1 Newcastle	3rd round, 8 Jan 2011	Fourth tier beat a Premier League side
Oxford United 3-2 Swansea	3rd round, 10 Jan 2016	League Two beat Premier League; Kemar Roofe scored twice
Newport County 2-1 Leicester	3rd round, 6 Jan 2019	Padraig Amond's late penalty won it

Woking's afternoon needs a footnote. Woking were 1-0 down at half-time, then Tim Buzaglo, a computer specialist who'd played cricket for Gibraltar, helped himself to a hat-trick. On BetMGM UK's numbers, it's the most unlikely FA Cup win of all time.

Non-League football hasn't had a Cup season like 2016/17 in living memory. Lincoln City, top of the National League under Danny Cowley, beat Oldham, Ipswich and Brighton, then went to Turf Moor, where Burnley had lost just three of their previous 29 competitive home games. Sean Raggett headed the winner in the 89th minute.

That made Lincoln the first non-League quarter-finalists since 1914. The run ended 5-0 at Arsenal on 11 March 2017, with 9,000 Lincoln fans in the away end, and Cowley summed it up: "we're the first non-league team to get to the quarter-finals in more than 100 years."

Sutton United were having a run of their own. Jamie Collins' penalty beat ten-man Leeds 1-0 at Gander Green Lane on 29 January, sending Sutton into the fifth round for the first time. There, Arsenal won 2-0 at a packed Gander Green Lane.

That tie also gave the Cup its strangest betting story. Reserve keeper Wayne Shaw, 45, ate a pie on the bench after a bookmaker had priced him at 8-1 to do exactly that. He admitted he knew about the market and resigned. The FA fined him £375 and banned him for two months, and the Gambling Commission fined the company behind the price £84,000. Players and staff can't bet on football, and a novelty market is only ever as clean as the people in it.

Every big upset looks obvious afterwards. Before kick-off it's just a set of prices, and reading those prices properly is where you either find an edge or hand one over.

Turning odds into probability

The 2013 final makes a tidy example. Pre-match prices reported by OddsShark (via SB Nation and Bleacher Report) in May 2013 had Manchester City at 1.40, the draw at 4.75 and Wigan at 8.00.

Implied probability = 1 / decimal odds

Man City 1.40  -> 71.4%
Draw     4.75  -> 21.1%
Wigan    8.00  -> 12.5%
Total          -> 105.0%  (bookmaker margin about 5%)

Fractional:  4/1 = 20%   11/1 = 8.3%   17/1 = 5.6%   79/1 = 1.25%

According to BetMGM UK, Leeds were 17/1 at Old Trafford in 2010, and League Two Oldham were 11/1 at Fulham in January 2019. When Fulham went ahead, Oldham drifted to 79/1 in-play. Aleksandar Mitrović then missed a penalty at 1-1, and Callum Lang won it in the 88th minute.

Know which market you're in

A 90-minute result bet ignores extra time and penalties. A to qualify bet doesn't. Hereford's famous replay finished 1-1 after 90 minutes, so on today's markets a draw backer would have been paid while the to-qualify money went to Hereford.

With big underdogs, handicap lines (+1.5 or +2 goals), double chance and draw no bet let you back a stubborn performance without needing the whole fairy tale. Our guide to the favourite-longshot bias explains why the most romantic prices are often too short, and our piece on why favourites lose value looks at the same coin from the other side.

The non-League clubs are still scrapping for first-round places. Here's the road to Wembley.

Round	Date
Fourth qualifying round	Sat 17 Oct 2026
First round proper	Sat 7 Nov 2026
Second round proper	Sat 5 Dec 2026
Third round proper	Sat 9 Jan 2027
Fourth round proper	Sat 13 Feb 2027
Fifth round proper	Sat 6 Mar 2027
Quarter-finals	Sat 3 Apr 2027
Semi-finals	Sat 24 Apr 2027
Final, Wembley	Sat 22 May 2027

The third round is where the Premier League giants walk into the trap. For round-by-round ideas, our FA Cup betting guide picks up where this history leaves off.

• Shocks are rare per tie but common per round. Any single 10/1 underdog will usually lose, but a full third-round weekend nearly always throws up a few. Small stakes spread across the right ties beat one big punt on romance.
• Romance shortens the price. Everyone loves a giant-killing, so the most talked-about underdogs are often too short. We'd rather find the quiet away-day upset than the TV tie the whole country fancies. That is value betting in a nutshell: beat the price, not the story.
• Watch the favourite's priorities. Liverpool rested players at Burnley in 2005, lost 1-0 to a Djimi Traoré own goal, then won the Champions League that May. A big club with bigger fish to fry is the one to take on.
• Know your market before you bet. A plucky draw is far more common than a full giant-killing, and it pays in the 90-minute market.
• Handicaps are the underdog's friend. Backing a non-League side on +1.5 or +2 goals rewards resilience, even on days the fairy tale doesn't come off.
• Don't panic in-play. Oldham went from 11/1 to 79/1 after conceding and still won at Fulham. Going a goal down doesn't turn a good pre-match read into a bad one.
• Back the shock, not the whole fairy tale. Hereford, Wrexham, Lincoln and Sutton were all knocked out within a round or two of their great day.

Set your budget for Cup weekends before the draw is made, and stick to it however good the stories get.

• FA Cup betting guide: upsets, tips and strategies
• The favourite-longshot bias explained
• Why betting favourites lose value
• Value betting in football: finding EV bets

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