You Bet | No clear danger of knockout blows for big guns in FA Cup third round
But the wild-card factor in the FA Cup can be squad rotation among the Premiership clubs
Normal service was resumed in last season's FA Cup when Arsenal overcame Hull in the final, albeit not without difficulty, and one of the more interesting third-round ties this weekend is a repeat of that match.
Arsenal's success was the 24th in 27 years by one of the Premier League's big six teams - a sequence broken most recently by Wigan in 2013 and before that by Portsmouth in 2008 and Everton in 1995.
In the end, a big-six team are likely to lift the trophy and there is no clear danger to their progress this weekend
As a reminder of a time when Cup upsets were more common, other third-round ties this weekend pit Wimbledon against Liverpool in a repeat of the famous 1988 final and Sunderland are home to Leeds in a role reversal of the 1973 final.
In the end, a big-six team are likely to lift the trophy and there is no clear danger to their progress this weekend. Only Arsenal and Tottenham, away to Burnley, face Premier League opposition and both of their rivals come from the bottom six - a group that tends to put league survival ahead of Cup heroics.
Squad rotation is just as likely to come from Hull and Burnley as it is from Arsenal and Tottenham, and it is that factor which makes Cup betting fraught with difficulty. There will be upsets in each round, for sure, but predicting where they might come is problematic until the team line-ups are known.
Even high-fliers from the Championship and League One might be prepared to concede the chance of a Cup upset in order to further their promotion prospects by resting players and it is worth remembering there were more odds-on failures than winners at this stage of last year's competition, which makes bankers hard to find.
