Should lower-ranked teams always play at home in the FA Cup?

Muddy pitches, febrile home crowds and the Premier League's biggest stars taken far beyond their comfort zones.

The FA Cup was at its very best at the weekend, with several top-flight sides given an almighty scare by lower-league opposition - and one even knocked out by a team two divisions below and almost certain to be relegated.

But how different would it have been if teams like Arsenal, Chelsea and Sunderland were playing at their own stadiums instead?

Would we have missed out on some magic?

BBC Sport looks at whether lower-ranked teams should always get to play at home in the FA Cup.

Since replays were scrapped for the 2024-25 season, there have been eight instances of a Premier League team being knocked out by a club from a lower division.

But the split is perhaps not what you'd expect, with four shocks coming at home and four away.

Mansfield recorded a fine 2-1 victory at top-flight strugglers Burnley just to set up Saturday's meeting with Arsenal, while Championship side Southampton won 1-0 at Fulham on Sunday - albeit they were only playing each other in the league 12 months ago.

Looking further back, though, many of the most famous shocks in FA Cup history did come when the lower-league side was playing at home.

In a rundown of the greatest upsets of all time, compiled by BBC Sport after non-league Macclesfield's remarkable 2-1 victory over holders Crystal Palace in this year's third round, nine of the 10 ties shortlisted came when the lower-ranked team was on their own pitch.

Bradford's 4-2 win at Chelsea in 2015 was the outlier.

Port Vale's victory over Sunderland came just five days after knocking Championship side Bristol City out in the fourth round - a tie which had to be rearranged such was the state of the pitch.

"We love this pitch here at Port Vale and we played to the conditions," said Vale hero Ben Waine, whose winning goal against the Black Cats sent the League One strugglers into the quarter-finals for the first time since 1954.

Sunderland boss Regis le Bris said he wouldn't "find excuses" for their defeat and that "the pitch is the pitch".

However, he also said: "It levels everything, technically and tactically. You put in the battle and fighting spirit and they were good at that - the crowd, the stadium, the event."

While Arsenal were able to squeeze past third-tier side Mansfield, they too had to contend with a bumpy, mud-strewn surface at One Call Stadium - a ground, perhaps more aptly, which used to be called Field Mill.

Gunners goalscorer Eberechi Eze admitted "it was a difficult environment to play in", while manager Mikel Arteta described it as "a proper FA Cup tie" thanks to the stadium and atmosphere created.

Famously, after Macclesfield knocked Palace out in the third round, it was claimed then Eagles captain Marc Guehi said at the coin toss he didn't fancy the 3G pitch.

While fans were treated to some great drama on the pitch, what about the impact for clubs off it?

Mansfield's game against Premier League leaders Arsenal was played in front of a packed stadium and picked to be shown live on BBC One, bringing in some welcome funds for the League One club.

However, the Stags could have made more than 10 times what they earned from that home game if it was instead played at Emirates Stadium.

"After stripping out VAT and estimated matchday costs of around £20,000, Mansfield's gate receipts from their home tie against Arsenal at The One Call Stadium were likely in the region of £160,000," football finance expert Kieran Maguire told BBC Sport.

"The FA takes 10% for its central pool, with the remainder split evenly between the two clubs, meaning both sides would have walked away with somewhere between £70,000 and £75,000.

"Had the match been switched to the Emirates, the financial picture would have looked very different.

"A sold-out Arsenal crowd at reduced cup prices, an average yield of around £35 per ticket (which is conservative, given the overall average at the Emirates was £84 in 2023-24), would have generated total receipts of approximately £2.1m.

"Even after accounting for Arsenal's significantly higher hosting costs and giving the FA its share, each club could reasonably have expected to pocket around £800,000 to £900,000.

"To put that in context for Mansfield, the average full-season matchday revenue for a bottom-half League One club in 2023-24 was around £3m. A single game at the Emirates would have been between a quarter and a third of that."

It is one of the reasons many English Football League clubs were so annoyed when replays were scrapped, with CEO Trevor Birch arguing: "This is another traditional revenue stream lost for EFL clubs at a time when the financial gap between the biggest clubs and those further down the pyramid is widening."

Cup competitions in Germany and Spain actually have rules in place so that lower-ranked teams play at home when facing higher-league opposition.

In Germany's DFB Pokal, the first two rounds are designed so that teams either in or below the third division are automatically drawn at home to higher-ranked teams.

Should any side from that level remain in the competition in later rounds, they will be automatically designated as the home team.

In 2024-25, Arminia Bielefeld, then a third-division side, reached the final having knocked out four Bundesliga sides at home.

In the previous season, second-tier Kaiserslautern and third-tier Saarbrucken both reached the last four, with Kaiserslautern going on to lose to Bayer Leverkusen in the final.

The ruling is the same in Spain's Copa del Rey, where the lower-ranked teams are drawn in home ties throughout the competition.

In this season's tournament, Albacete were the only side outside of La Liga to reach the quarter-finals and were given a home draw for their match against Barcelona, which they lost 2-1.