On an FA Cup weekend in which all four ties have a firm favourite, it might be helpful to know how little time in matches even the very best teams spend in front. The reason football fans so often seem disgruntled might be that most of the time they are not seeing what they want or expect to see.

Every supporter wants to watch his team winning. Let us start at the top, as high as you can possibly get. Imagine you support Manchester United, the most successful English club of the modern era. And imagine that during the past 10 seasons you have followed them home and away to watch every match they played in the Premier League. In those matches, Manchester United were leading for an average of just 36½ minutes.

You were watching the best team in the country and they were leading for less than half of the time they spent on the pitch – an average of just 31 minutes away and 42 minutes at home.

The knowledge of how long a team are likely to be ahead or behind during a match is useful when betting in the spread markets (called leading minutes) and fixed-odds markets on what the state of play will be at different times during a match – usually 15, 30, 45 and 60 minutes.

The figures which follow are from Premier League games played during the past 10 seasons, 1998-99 through to 2007-08. In games between teams of similar ability – those who finished in adjacent positions in the final table – home teams were leading for an average of 29 minutes, scores were level for an average of 46 minutes and away teams were leading for an average of 15 minutes.

If the home team were stronger than the away team, they were likely to be leading for longer, and vice versa. When the visiting team, for example, during a season in which they finished between one and seven places below the home team at its end, the hosts led for an average of only 33 minutes.

It was only in games featuring a home team who finished 14 or more places above the away team that the hosts were likely to be leading the visitors for more than half of the 90 minutes – on average, for 47 minutes. In any match, the better team are the most likely winners, but it can take longer than you might think for them to establish their superiority.Kevin Pullein is football tipster for the Racing Post