What Magic?
2January 6, 2018 by Made In Brum
You can’t really go without hearing the phrase “the magic of the cup” several times around FA Cup weekend, but does it really still exist?
Blues face Burton with only the Kop stand open today. The attendance may well receive a small boost by our back to back victories but if more than 10k show up, it will probably be a surprise to most. That’s about half our average gate for this season! So why do the fans not want to show up to watch Blues at home?
Maybe the fact both teams will be expected to make numerous changes after a busy Christmas period doesn’t help. Or the fact Burton are hardly an attractive prospect for some. Maybe some season ticket holders don’t want to pay for a match ticket. Would we get 20k if we played a full strength side and let season ticket holders in for free? It would certainly help but some would still stay at home I’m sure. Maybe the magic of the cup is reserved for the big clubs playing each other, or the plucky underdog taking on a premier league giant.
Either way Blues have an excellent opportunity to progress to the 4th round today, continue our winning run and also finally get a win over Burton, who have been a bit of a thorn in our side of late.
Keep Right on to the 4th round!!
Made In Brum 
Hi, v good article and point about FA cup attendance (not just applicable to Birmingham). We’re interested in re-blogging your article on our site (https://threemenandafootball.wordpress.com/). Would that be ok with you? You will receive full credit, it’ll be v clear the content is yours, not ours, and we will also link through to your twitter account via our own twitter feed.
Reblogged this on Three men and a football and commented:
Whilst there’s been a lot of fallout from giant killings in the FA Cup third round this week, this post offers an interesting insight into the (lack of) “Magic” of the FA cup amongst middle tier clubs. By that I mean fixtures like these – two Championship sides. Neither are minnows looking for an upset or big pay day. Their main prize is their league position, and the FA cup can feel like an unnecessary distraction, as manifested by the team changes and the low turnout. For the record, only 7000 fans turned up to watch Birmingham City beat Burton Albion 1-0.
A home time vs Arsenal in the next round would have filled the stadium, but say Birmingham get Nottingham Forest instead, the same low attendance may repeat itself in the 4th round…