| Re: Should we scrap replays?
Well, in an ideal world, I'd scrap the League Cup altogether so replays in the FA Cup would not be an issue (not in terms of number of games in a season anyway).
It's hard to see his point, or Lehmann's the other day, since Arsenal are rotating and playing their younger players in the League Cup and FA Cup. Hardly any of their players are playing weekends and midweeks consistently (only Toure and Fabregas are anywhere near to having been overplayed). They will also benefit greatly from being able to do this over the years since this has provided good experience for them.
The Cup runs bring in income that is then used to pay players wages, which then in turn allows them to bring in players to improve the sizes of their squads so they may then rotate and field differing teams in the domestic cups. I would feel for a team with a first team squad of 18 or so, but our big four all have huge squads on the basis they need them to do exactly what they are all doing, rotating in the domestic cups. The whole "we're tired the English league is so much worse than everyone else's" thing seems to just be a precursor to an excuse that they may use down the line.
Spain has 20 teams in it's league, as does Italy, as does France. Since the big four in England aren't using many of their 1st team players in domestic cups, it's hard to see what their arguement is. Their schedule is virtually the same as every other elite European nation.
In fact the only country that went and reduced to the "ideal" 18 teams was Germany, and they've bombed ever since they did this on the Euro stage.
Okay so long rant, but no. Let's keep cup replays, screw the bigger teams (since, frankly, that's all they want to do to everyone else anyway!!) |