In his exclusive column for CaughtOffside, former Aston Villa attacker Stan Collymore discusses some of football’s biggest talking points, including which team has had the best transfer window, is Kieran McKenna showing his naivety at Ipswich, should Chelsea players sue the club and much more.
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Ridiculous Carabao Cup draw shames the game
The Carabao Cup draw was an absolute shambles. It was a loaded, managed, overseeded draw, and we are now getting to the point whereby clubs with clout are having too much say in tournaments.
It’s massively subservient to the Premier League and the Champions League and the FA Cup will end up doing it too.
We’ve got the situation even as low as the National League, where U18 teams are playing senior men’s teams in their cup competition, and I just want to get back to having just one tournament somewhere where there’s 50 teams that go in a pot, they get drawn out and they play each other.
Back in 1978/79, Liverpool were champions of Europe and Nottingham Forest were the newly crowned champions of England when the draw was made for the European Cup.
Lo and behold, champions of England, Nottingham Forest, come out against defending European champions, Liverpool, and Forest beat Liverpool over two legs in an unseeded first round.
I think the fact that we’ve gone from a very common sense European Cup draw to an artificially constructed draw, which skews the draw towards clubs in the Champions League or high end in the Premier League, is killing the game with 1000 cuts.
It’s a really bad look for the Carabao Cup, but it’s a really bad look for football in England too.
Let’s get back to at least having one or two tournaments where you have an open draw, and every smaller club up and down the country is going ‘happy days, we might actually get an opportunity to win this.’
In the meantime… the game’s gone.
Transfer window common sense has been restored
It just goes to show that for Premier League clubs this summer,…
Source link : https://www.caughtoffside.com/2024/08/29/collymores-column-slot-carabao/
Author : Stan Collymore
Publish date : 2024-08-29 11:37:52
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