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January 21, 2015

2014-15 FA Cup, Fourth Round Proper: location-map with current average attendances./ With a brief illustrated article on the biggest winners in the 3rd Round…the supporters of the Cardiff City Bluebirds./ Plus update, with Cup-upsets chart (featuring Bradford City, Blackburn Rovers, Middlesbrough, Leicester City, Crystal Palace and Cambridge United).

Filed under: 2014-15 FA Cup — admin @ 10:55 pm

http://billsportsmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/2014-15_fa-cup_4th-round_map_w-current-attendances_post_c_.gif
2014-15 FA Cup, Fourth Round Proper: location-map with current average attendances




FA Cup fixtures bbc.com/sport/football/fa-cup/fixtures.
BBC.co.uk/FA Cup.

Broadcast games (en.wikipedia.org).

Update: biggest upsets in the 2014-15 FA Cup 4th Round
The chart below shows the 5 biggest upsets in the 2014-15 FA Cup 4th Round, plus the best result for the lower-placed club which resulted in a draw (from Friday the 23rd and Saturday the 24th of January 2015/if there are any more big upsets, the chart will be updated further). Note: league placements were from the start of the weekend (that is, Friday morning)…
2014-15_fa-cup_4th-round_upsets_jan2015_e_.gif

The biggest upset of the 2014-15 FA Cup 3rd Round
The biggest upset of the 2014-15 FA Cup 3rd Round was when plucky minnows/overacheiving-3rd-division-side Rochdale AFC (of Greater Manchester/originally of Lancashire), beat 2nd-division-mainstays/twice-European-champions Nottingham Forest 1-0 before 6,791 at Spotland. That crowd was almost double the ‘Dale’s current home crowd size. Here is an article on that by Daniel Taylor at the Observer, Peter Vincenti the toast of Rochdale as penalty puts out Nottingham Forest (theguardian.com/football). This is the second straight season Rochdale has upended a second division giant in the third round (last year it was Leeds Utd whom they embarrassed). Rochdale’s reward for the win is momentum in the League – the life-long lower division club is up to 5th place and Keith Hill’s squad could actually be in position to be campaigning for the club’s first-ever promotion to the second tier. Rochdale’s other reward for the win is a sweet (and lucrative) 4th Round home tie versus an in-form Stoke City. That match is on the Monday (26th Jan.), and will be televised.

Cardiff City: back to blue, thanks to a well-organized fan-boycott…
There was another victory for the little guy…a victory that had nothing to do with what happened on the pitch, but, rather, what didn’t happen in the stands. In Cardiff, irate Bluebirds supporters organized a match boycott to show owner/dictator’s crony Vincent Tan that they had had enough of his juvenile re-branding of the blue Bluebirds of Cardiff City into the red Red Dragons. A re-branding done so as to magically start selling loads of shirts in Asia. A re-branding that has left the Cardiff City house divided and bitter (and it no doubt soured their promotion to the Premier League in May 2013, and it no doubt contributed to their relegation a year later).

[Here are some relevant figures...Cardiff City averaged 27.2 K per game last year (2013-14) in the Premier League, are currently averaging 21.3 K this season back in the Championship, and drew 6.4 K for a League Cup 3rd Rd match in September 2014.]

Cardiff City season ticket holders were loath to have a boycott during matches they had paid for (and who can blame them), so they waited for a match which they would have had to pay for out-of-pocket to attend – and a Friday night FA Cup 3rd Round match (with the media attention the third round offers), fit the bill perfectly. Only a little over four thousand showed up for the match versus Colchester United (which Cardiff won 3-1) (you can see a photo of the empty stands in the illustration below). As it says in the following article from Wales Online by Steve Tucker (linked to after the quote)…”it was the silence from the stands that was most deafening with a crowd of just 4,194 turning out to watch the encounter. It was the lowest ever attendance for a match at Cardiff City Stadium since the venue opened back in 2009 and the empty seats were a stark indicator of where the Bluebirds stand as a club right now. Calls for a boycott to protest against owner Vincent Tan’s rebranding of the club’s home shirts to red looked to have been answered with just a glance around the embarrassingly empty stands all the confirmation one needed.” {end of excerpt from Cardiff City 3 – 1 Colchester match report: Bluebirds record win in front of record low home crowd, by Steve Tucker at walesonline.co.uk/football).

And guess what? The boycott was successful! Just one week later, this news came in…The Bluebirds are BACK! Cardiff owner Vincent Tan agrees to return of blue home shirts (article by Joe Short at express.co.uk/football). This article at the Telegraph by James Corrigan reports that Tan’s 87-year-old mother convinced him to drop the red and bring back the blue, Cardiff to wear blue again after Vincent Tan takes advice from his mum; Malaysian owner forced change to red two years ago but fans revolted (telegraph.co.uk/football). Cardiff City actually then asked the FA for a special waiver to allow them to start wearing the blue again at home immediately, and that request was allowed (and Cardiff wore blue their next home game, v Fulham on 10 Jan. 2015/see a photo from that below). In the FA Cup 4th Round on Saturday 24th January 2015, Cardiff host fellow Championship side Reading. There will probably be a bit more than 4 thousand attending [note: there were 11,750 in attendance as Cardiff fell to Reading 1-2].

Old content disclaimer. I posted the original version of this illustration below 13 months ago; I could not resist updating it & re-posting it…
cardiff-city-fans_see-red-and-boycott_jan-2015-fa-cup_back-to-blue-for-the-bluebirds_b_.gif
Image and Photo credits above –
Old Cardiff City crests from kassiesa.nl/uefa/clubs/html/C; uefa.wikidot.com/england:cardiff-city-fc. [Template for CCFC crests from last 25 years from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_City_F.C.#Club_logo_history.]. Photo of Vincent Tan (in classic Bond-villian look), flanked by 2 local toadies, both of whom sport flourishes of red (in true suck-up fashion), photo from Getty Images via dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2402081/Cardiff-owner-Vincent-Tan-adds-teams-kit-shirt-tie-combo. Photo of Cardiff City fans (some in red but more in blue), photo from Reuters via mirror.co.uk/sport/football. Photo of ‘Tan Out’ T-shirt uploaded by mugitmugit at ebay.com, ebay.co.uk/itm/Tan-Out-Cardiff-City-Bluebirds-t-shirt. Photo of Cardiff City fans’ protest banner from msn.foxsports.com/foxsoccer/premierleague/story/cardiff-fans-stage-protest-against-owner-vincent-tan-before-boxing-day-fixture. Photo of Cardiff fans with ‘Hate the red/love the blue’ banner, photo by Getty Images via telegraph.co.uk/football. Photo of empty seats via fan-boycott at Cardiff City Stadium by Huw Evans Picture Agency via walesonline.co.uk/football. Photo of Cardiff players back in blue, photo by Wales News Service via bbc.com/football.

___
Thanks to Soccerway.com for attendance figures. You can find attendance figures (updated daily) for levels 1 through 6 of the English football pyramid at Soccerway, http://us.soccerway.com/national/england/premier-league/20142015/regular-season/r25191/.

Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, 2014–15 FA Cup.

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