SirAndyOfCrosby
Well-known member
- Joined
- 6 Apr 2022
- Messages
- 1,471
The German Cup draw has all lower-league teams in one pot and all Bundesliga 1 and 2 teams in another. All lower teams get home advantage and the game is done in one day, ET and penalties. Lower-league clubs still get a good payday and TV money, less fixture congestion and giant killings still happen at roughly the rate as in England. It's a decent system once you get used to it.
It’s a ‘hard no’ from me. Any type of manipulation of the draw is wrong. I don’t like North/South regionalisation in our League Cup, let alone the ‘Championship/top half L1 v bottom half L1/L2’ split. Highly manipulative, boring and quite frankly patronising.
If the average fan has lost interest in a particular competition it’s a shame, but it’s even more of a shame to have to artificially manipulate it by changing the format in any way. The FA Cup should be (as should the League Cup for that matter) a completely open draw (at least from the First Round Proper). No seeds, no regions, one off cup tie that goes to a replay if it ends in a draw (or two legs for the League Cup). For me, as soon as you start tinkering the whole thing falls apart. The Football League Trophy was already a steaming pile of turd, but the PL kids teams have now completely killed it. Any further manipulation of the League Cup or FA Cup will (IMHO) only do the same for these.
As a wider point, no disrespect to Germany, but their League system has nowhere near the depth of ours - none of the big countries of Europe do for that matter. In Spain you only need to go down like 2 divisions before its farmers playing fishermen on a dusty plain. It’s why the FA made a song and dance about our 11k+ attendance v Luton in the fifth tier when they were bidding for a tournament - the comparable level elsewhere is regionalised amateur dogsh*t.
It’s also why arrogant patronising types like Guardiola just do not get it. The English Football League system does not exist to serve the national football team (as he has implied) and it most definitely doesn’t exist to serve the needs of Manchester City or any other club with delusions of grandeur on the European stage.
Guardiola can - and I mean this in the nicest possible sense – get tae f*ck.