Revealed: Plymouth Argyle’s FA Cup clash with Manchester City worth staggering seven-figure sum | OneFootball

Manchester City’s FA Cup fifth round tie against Plymouth Argyle was worth a staggering seven-figure sum to the Championship club, according to their chairman.

The two sides from the first and second divisions of the English football pyramid went head to head on Saturday evening in a clash that brought the very hardest efforts out of the reigning Premier League champions.

As both sides battled for a place in the last-eight of this season’s FA Cup, it was Argyle who took the lead in the first-half through a corner before Manchester City’s Nico O’Reilly would rescue the scoring on the stroke of half-time with his own headed effort from a set-piece.

The teenage academy graduate then put his side ahead through another set-piece and another headed goal, converting a Phil Foden corner and making way for Kevin De Bruyne to round off the contest late on in the game.

But the Championship club have certainly had memories made through their solitary goal at the home of the 2023 European champions, and the rewards have also come in a financial sense following the tie.

Speaking during an interview with BBC Radio Devon, Plymouth Argyle chairman Simon Hallett has claimed that the visit to Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium in the FA Cup fifth round would be worth up to £1 million alone to the Championship club.

“We’ve yet to work out the exact figures, but I am going to say it’s going to be somewhere between £600,000 and £1 million to Argyle,” Hallett said. “When we played Liverpool eight years ago Anfield had a capacity of just over 50,000 – we made about £700,000.

“So I think we should do a little bit better this time. The Etihad I believe has a capacity of about 62,000, so we think it should be somewhere between £600,000 and £1 million. It won’t mean as much as it did when we played Liverpool, though.”

He continued, “When we played Liverpool eight years ago that £700,000 represented about a third of our football budget, but today our football budget is many multiples of what it was then, so it won’t be as significant.

“Much more important than the money – and the money will be nice – is that it’s going to be a great day out for at least 15,000 of our fans.”

For Manchester City, they now progress into the quarter-final stage of the FA Cup and will certainly fancy themselves for the remainder of the competition with the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Newcastle United, and Manchester United all out.

Next up for Pep Guardiola and his players is the stern test of facing Andoni Iraola’s Bournemouth away from home, after the south coast club progressed themselves from the fifth round with a win over Wolves at home.