We are just hours away from kickoff in the 2026 BFFA Cup and here are is a brief preview of the two teams – Preliminary Version and Sporting Wicker Park.
Gameweek 38
Teams representing all four leagues have appeared in the Final over the years, but this will be the first-ever all-Championship BFFA Cup Final. The last time the Final was contested by two teams from the same league was 2016 when two teams from the Premier League played out the second edition of the BFFA Cup. SB Town United Athletic Onion Baggers triumphed, beating Sporting Wicker Park 50-37.
As we have two Championship teams coming together for the biggest BFFA Cup matchup of the year, we can begin by touching on their league campaign as a comparison of their season’s efforts. As we mentioned in the previous article, looking at this game from a league angle, it looks like it could be a very one-sided affair. Preliminary Version, currently 3rd in the league, whitewashed their opponents this season, claiming all twelve points on their way to promotion. Sporting Wicker Park fell short of the promotion places (shy by eight points with one game to go, at time of writing), and will be left wondering what could have been if they had won just one of those four games…
GW5: Preliminary Version 59 – 39 Sporting Wicker Park
GW14: Preliminary Version 61 – 44 Sporting Wicker Park
GW23: Preliminary Version 67½ – 55 Sporting Wicker Park
GW32: Preliminary Version 77 – 55 Sporting Wicker Park
The Road to the Final
| Round | Preliminary Version | Sporting Wicker Park |
|---|---|---|
| First Round | Bye | Bye |
| Second Round | Won 64 – 54 vs. Peltier | Won 62 – 51 vs. All Star Gunners |
| Third Round | Won 77 – 65 vs. GoFYS FC | Won 55 – 46½ vs. Hung Like A Bony |
| Quarter-Finals | Won 53½ – 53 vs. Smash & Grab | Won 50 – 48½ vs. Sporting Thrilhaus |
| Semi-Finals | Won 67 – 52 vs. Beyer Neverleusen | Won 59 – 57½ vs. Mighty Fine |
Previous BFFA Cups:
| Preliminary Version | Sporting Wicker Park |
|---|---|
| 2023: Round 2 2024: Quarter-Finals 2025: Round 2 | 2015: Quarter-Finals 2016: Runners-Up 2017: Round 3 2018: Round 2 2019: Round 2 2020: Round 2 2020 (S7 Winter Cup): Round 1 2021 (S7 Spring Cup): Round 3 2022: Round 3 2023: Round 2 2024: Semi-Finals 2025: Round 1 |
Before fighting over league dominance in the Championship this year, Preliminary Version (formerly CG XI) and Sporting Wicker Park have met three times in the knockout tournaments. In Season 10, they shared Group A in the Champions League, where they both took a win from the other and both progressed to the final eight. There, CG XI were KO’d by Gloopy Yarbles in a tiebreaker (71-71 on aggregate, lost 4-1 on goals scored), and SWP went all the way to win the whole thing. Agonisingly, had CG XI scored a single point more in the two games against Gloopy, they would have won the Semi-Final against De Bruyne Trousers and beaten SWP in the Final (S10 GW17 scores were CG: 51 and SWP: 47).
But that is now just water-under-the-bridge, history, stuff of legend, Champions League folklore (although some amount of bitterness against The Fates may be expected). More relevant to today’s topic is their previous BFFA Cup meeting, also in Season 10, in a 2024 BFFA Cup Quarter-Final. Sporting were the victors in that encounter, going through with a 38 – 32 win (before being stopped in the Semis). That however, as we’ve mentioned above, was the last time that Wicker Park have beaten Preliminary Version.
The Teams
There is a difference in opinion when it comes to overlapping squads. Some managers enjoy the test of deciding what to do against opponents who share the same star players; some managers believe that their squads should be unique, and shared players should be “cup-tied”, excluded from the line-ups. Luckily, that doesn’t apply to us this week.
There are only a handful of players that have played for Prelim and SWP this season, and all but two have been released. Currently, Preliminary Version have taken over the contract of Christhian Mosquera – signed by Prelim in GW4, released in GW6, signed by SWP in GW10, was an unsused sub and released the following week, then re-signed for Prelim ahead of GW37 and was their star player (8½ FPts) in that 39½-30½ loss to Gnonto Seed last week.
Similarly, Joshua Zirkzee was once picked up by SWP, released two weeks later, joined PVFC on a one-week contract, scored -1 (luckily, Prelim still won by one point), disappeared for a while, then was re-hired by Wicker Park two days ago as United (guaranteed third place) prepare to travel to Brighton.
Sporting Wicker Park have also signed Nick Pope and Sven Botman (both away at Fulham) ahead of this year’s Cup Final, and also Konstantinos Mavropanos for West Ham’s do-or-die game against Leeds United. We might also see Conor Gallagher in the red-and-blue of SWP as Spurs also go in to a relegation fight, albeit with a league points advantage over West Ham.
Preliminary Version have put their support behind young attacking talent Rio Ngumoha, who has scored twice this season and played the full 90 minutes against Villa last weekend. Lammens replaces Petrovic in goal and Mosquera was selected to replace Khusanov. Mosquera will be reunited with Arsenal teammate Gabriel (205 FPts this season) and we expect they will be in Prelim’s Cup Final squad alongside Mitchell and Strand Larsen at Selhurst Park.
Prelim’s attack will be testing the SWP defence through Harry Wilson (PV) facing Botman (SWP) at Craven Cottage, and Igor Jesus (PV) taking on Senesi (SWP) at the City Ground. Going down the other end, Ollie Watkins and John McGinn look dangerous for Wicker Park & European Champions Aston Villa and, if they’re not rested, will be testing Marc Guehi in the Preliminary Version defence. We’ve seen Mavropanos finding the net for West Ham more than once this year; he could be taking points from Bijol on Sunday if The Hammers are looking for unconventional ways to stay up; and Leandro Trossard, who has been with SWP since GW7, will be returning to trouble Mitchell in the PV back line. On top of those face-offs, SWP can also boast Matheus Cunha, Phil Foden, Nico O’Reilly and Bernardo Silva (making his last appearance for City) in a strong and powerful Wicker midfield. It’s also worth noting that in the SWP defence, Senesi and van Dijk have both scored in previous BFFA Cup final weekends – Senesi in 2024 and VvD in 2025.
Scores Comparison
Despite all their league matchups (green gameweeks in the image above) going the way of the newer, fourth-year team Prelim, the originals Sporting Wicker Park have outscored their Cup Final opponents a considerable amount of times, 14 out of the 37 gameweeks to be exact plus one draw. If they had been scheduled to play each other on Gameweek 3 then (assuming the line-ups were no different) SWP would have been W2, D1 & L1 against Prelim and could have been promoted to the Premier League (although all the other fixtures would have to be re-calculated too… I’m not going that deep into it!) The point is – SWP have outscored Prelim 38% of the time this season, including a massive 33½ FPt differential last week.
Preliminary Version, currently fourth in the Best-ish rankings, have the better matchpoint total of the two, 2100½ vs. 1965, an average of nearly 4 points per gameweek superior. And let’s not forget that they’ve just knocked out the #1 team and favourites for the Cup – Beedle’s Boys. Looking at the table above, we can see that over the first half of the season, there was only a half-point difference between the two (993 vs. 993½ in SWP’s favour), which means that even though SWP won less hypothetical matchups, they scored far better in the gameweeks when they did. The same can’t be said about the second half of the season, however, twice in the last five SWP have outdone Prelim by over 30 points. So it will be a complete surprise to see which team blows the other away, or whether this will be a close-run, single-afternoon points extravanganza.
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