Carling Cup Draw A Farce

Well I don’t hesitate in saying that the powers of English football have just about ruined the Carling Cup.

Look at the draw and then the dates. They are making a draw for sides all across England just six working days before the ties are supposed to be played.

That means that should a team like Carlisle get Plymouth away, and a seven hour journey be involved, that fans would have just six days to arrange days off work, come up with the £100 for the game, and arrange travel.

OK that tie did not come out, but should it have then it would have just underlined the fact.

Whilst there is a large amount of teams remaining in the cup then the draw should be regionalised, OK it might not be perfect but I don’t have a problem with travelling two hours to a game. But four hours on a Tuesday night, and probably more, is ridiculous.

Once you get off the motorway in London it takes an hour to get to Charlton’s ground, County fans are looking at having to leave at one to get to Charlton in time.

There were 48 teams left in the competition, why not split it into two halves, north and south and just do an outright draw so League Two clubs have a better chance of making it further.

This messing about with seeding makes it OBVIOUS that the FA want the draw FIXED to get the best teams in it at the latter stages.

It’s the only reason behind the seeding. UEFA do it to keep the big clubs apart in the group stages so they get the best possible quarter finals.

OK its not impossible for teams to get through the seeding stage, but its blatantly obvious that the FA have done it so they have the Premiership and top Championship clubs left to make the competition more exciting because its going down the drain.

It’s the only reason, the FA were embarrassed last year when Arsenal’s reserves got to the final and they don’t want it to happen again. They want the strongest teams to go through because it will provide the teams like Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool with sterner tests.

So now the supporters clubs will be frantically trying to organise coaches for journeys of more than three hours on a night game. Fans won’t be getting back till two in the morning, meaning they’re likely to need more than one day off work, and yet again the FA have shown they couldn’t organise a p*ss up in a brewery.

If my geography is correct (I don’t hold out much hope!) then no more than seven clubs face trips of more than three hours.

This is an absolute farce when the games are less than two weeks away, I wouldn’t mind as much if the rounds were a month apart but it can’t be possible when the FA insist on cramming the final in in February so they don’t mess up their precious *huge* Premiership.

Yeh, I won’t be going. I won’t be able to get the time off work, but even if I wasn’t working it would take a lot for me to go on that day. But if it was City, Wigan, Oldham, Bolton, Sheffield Wednesday, Sheffield United, Blackpool then I reckon that 2000 County fans would have easily travelled.

Let’s get it sorted next year, they only have to look at the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy and realise that it isn’t rocket science.