Lucky Draws

Are City actually lucky in domestic cup draws?

🟦City draw a PL team 60% of the time in 3rd/4th round

🟥Liverpool draw a PL team 48% of the time in 3rd/4th Round

🟧United draw a PL team 42% of the time in 3rd/4th Round

The "Man City get easy draws" narrative always makes me laugh. Its something that has stuck between the years of 2018 to 2020 but is not an accurate narrative at all.

Lets just look at some real data since 2015/16

To start with City have had some unfavourable away draws during this period.

Only 37% of them have been at home. This should be closer to 50% the larger the sample size but with 56 draws a 13% swing is considered extremely unlucky.

For comparisons sake:

- Liverpool are at home 53% of the time (little lucky)

- United are at home 60% of the time (very lucky)

*these % do not include drawing away/home for Wembley games

For City to reach 50% again we'd need to draw our next 14 games at home.

Lets go further

From 2016 to 2017 City got one of the most improbable statistical anomalies ever - they drew 11 premier league teams in a row and here's the kicker; every draw City was the away team

To put in numbers how unlikely it is to get 11 away draws in a row its like flipping a coin 11 times in a row and every time it lands on heads. The chances of this are: 0.049% or 1 in 2048.

(*note the rest of my data removes Wembley games as away or home - however in this scenario we were still drawn as the away team for those finals)

So this incredibly "unlucky" period was followed by a "lucky" period" - which is where the narrative begins.

The next 3 years saw some favourable draws (albeit still more away than home) with 50% of draws going to lower league opposition. But as always with data/statistics there's a return to the mean.

The last 3 years has seen unfavourable premier league draws. With 12 of 16 games all being played against Premier League teams. 3 of those 4 games against lower opposition - Came at the end of Citys FA Cup run in 2023 where we played Bristol City, Burnley and Sheff Utd. However its important to note that for each of those rounds in 2023 there was a larger size than usual of lower league teams.

Overall we still get more Premier League draws at every round except the 5th round (FA cup only).

In the 3rd and 4th round (the time you have the best opportunity to avoid PL teams) of both competitions we have a combined 60% rate of getting a Premier League team. For comparisons sake Liverpool get a PL team only 48% of the time and Manchester United get a PL team only 42% of the time.

In the FA Cup Semi finals (6 in a row) we've generally had terrible luck in getting "lucky"

- 2024 - 33% of getting easier opposition ❌

- 2023 - 33% of getting easier opposition ✅

- 2022 - 33% of getting easier opposition ❌

- 2021 - 66% of getting easier opposition ❌

- 2020 - 0% Irrelevant

- 2019 - All considered easier opposition yet got the worst one ❌

The FA Cup semi final is usually pivotal as it lands between difficult premier league title deciders & Champions League knock out games.

When you compare us to other big teams in the league id say our cup draw luck is considered unlucky. Yet we've still won 5/9 league cups and 2/8 FA cups (9th still up for grabs) during that period