And I was asked on this site what the point of boycotting on Tuesday was, iceberg..tip of :roll:
Winter break
If you ask me we don't have a particularly harsh winter compared to a lot of countries who have such breaks. Football is simply impossible in some countries because of the conditions so a break over the winter makes perfect sense. Over here we don't have that problem so why do we need a break? The Premier League spin doctors will tell you it is to help the national team; a winter break allows the England team to rest and gives players a better chance of success at a major tournament in the summer.
Are we honestly meant to believe that footballers cannot cope with 50 or so football matches over a 10 month period before jetting off to a tournament? These are professional athletes, if they cannot cope with the strains of their sporting calendar then they aren't being prepared properly. Look at tennis players, they play 7 strenuous one-on-one games in a two week period and are still capable of adding multiple doubles tournaments to their fortnight's schedule at Wimbledon, once they've done that they head off to the other side of the world to do it all again somewhere else the following week. There is no excuse for being unfit for a major tournament, if footballers were honestly that under-prepared what would a month's break do for them 6 months prior to the event?
Putting the fitness aside is it really necessary for the whole Football League to go on a break? Our players rarely have a major tournament to contend with come the summer months, can we not spend our winter watching Argyle, potentially drawing in a few Premier League fans missing "their" clubs playing over the winter while the big boys are all on their winter tours of China/Japan/America...oops, I mean resting up for the summer.
FA Cup Midweek Rounds
I think Mark is spot on in his comment regarding devaluing the FA Cup, the League's oldest and proudest competition should be the first dates on the English football calendar. The Premier League and Football League calendars should be made to work around the FA Cup not the other way around.
For non-league clubs the first round is their cup final, for clubs at our level the third round is ours, for Premier clubs it should be the FA Cup final. The game has gone mad though, money drives decision makers. For the "suits" Stoke v Swansea in the "race for 7th" is considered a priority over a day at the home of football between what should be the two best clubs in England that year, not the two Premier clubs who bothered to play their first team in every round.
Am I against it though? Increasingly no purely because it sounds as though this will be one of the few chances I will get to watch a mid-week game in future, the plan appears to be to do away with mid-week ties to ensure us proper football fans are tucked up warm in front of the Champions League with our sofa supporter colleagues. The best games I have seen, some of the best memories I have of Argyle have been in the cold after school or after work. I won't miss the tiredness and raspy voice at work on a Wednesday but I wouldn't trade them. The atmosphere at a mid-week game is special, the joy you get all through the work day knowing you're off to Argyle that evening, how can they do away with that?
An Additional EFL League
With the number of agendas the "suits" have on the go it is easy to see where this on is heading. If we were competing in a fair game, if we were up against a reasonable opponent we would see Conference clubs and only Conference clubs filling the void this new division creates. The problem is we aren't playing a fair opponent
I honestly don't have a problem with a third division, in fact I'd like to see some of the grand old clubs that currently sit in the Conference back in the Football League but we have to ensure that it is these clubs that will be entering this league. The decision makers have their schemes, they sneak them in under a front and if we complain about them they threaten to take away the only scraps they give us. Suppose the football chiefs claim they want to protect relegation and promotion for that year's transition so in come clubs from outside the pyramid; B-Teams to keep the Prem bosses happy, Scottish teams to give Celtic and Rangers some actual competition to play against and spark new interest into the Premier League. If they wanted a route in this would certainly give them one.
Regionalisation
I'm sure this will appeal to clubs at our level because they would save on travel costs and would encourage more local games which attract nice away attendances. Equally this will appeal to travelling fans, shorter distances to travel to away games and no chance of a cold Tuesday night in Carlisle.
I do however get the feeling that we are looking at devaluing a competition again. Suddenly the 4th largest division in English football is no longer a national division, it's a southern feeder league to the big time of the Premier League, Championship and perhaps League 1 if they show themselves to be worthy.
