Manchester City: Disrespecting the Carabao Cup, how to make it palatable again!

Earlier on today the fixture dates and times for the Fourth round of the Carabao Cup was released. Manchester City will face Wolves on Tuesday 24th October.

I have already written about the opponent in a previous article, and would like to focus on another aspect of the competition here.

In his press conference before the Crystal Palace game held today, Pep stated the League Cup competition was a ‘waste of energy‘. I kind of agree with that assessment, in the current climate. Now if you were to ask any fan of Manchester City I don’t think the Carabao Cup would be the number one competition they’d want to win, given the choice.

Of course the knee jerk reaction was that Pep was out of line for saying this. Yes the cup has a tradition, and we’ve won it four times ourselves. Currently it makes up a good percentage of our domestic silverware haul since our inception. When you sell the rights abroad and have a third round draw via an internet stream from China at 4am British time, is Pep’s comments really hurting the tradition of the trophy most?

All successful sides have to play a whole host of games, in all competitions from August until May, with no real break. Spain only have the one trophy running alongside their La Liga season, and the same in Italy.

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Even the argument of playing the youth side in the competition doesn’t stop the Manager having to stop to concentrate on the upcoming fixture. So do we make it a youth competition for sides like City, and allow Simon Davies to take the reins? Would that be seen as taking the competition less seriously than not even entering?

Is there was a way we could cut down on the amount of games players had to play during the season? If we did, maybe managers like Pep, Jose and Mauricio Pochettino (who all stated they were not bothered by it) wouldn’t mind it so much?

How about eliminating half the International games we played during a season. Breaks to our season which saw players jet off all across the globe and running the risk of injury.

In the qualifying for the upcoming World Cup in Russia, the domestic leagues have seen their schedules interrupted five times. We have another two breaks, one in October and one in November, to go. That doesn’t include match day 6 which was scheduled in June this year.

Add those breaks in the season to the fact that some fans have been critical of the standard, and therefore worth, of the games. You have to ask what is the point, and can we not find another way of doing this?

I think we need to look at the Champions League, in all confederations, for a model. For simplicity lets take the European Champions League as the example. Teams qualify for the top European competition by doing well in their own domestic leagues. True, some get more places than others, but it essentially works. Other lesser sides have to go through a qualifying round with similar stature clubs before joining the Group stage.

Now each confederation already have a way of playing and sorting its teams. The European competition is known as the Euros and is held two years before the World Cup. For this competition, qualifiers are ran, much the same as for the World Cup, so why not utilize those.

At the moment FIFA have thirteen spaces in the World Cup for sides from Europe. In 2026 that will increase to 16, which, mathematically. is better. All sides making the final 16 of Euro 2024 would automatically qualify for the following World Cup.

Taking the thirteen spaces we are currently allocated, you would allocate twelve spaces to the top two in each of the six groups. At the moment, at the Euros, it is the best top four third place finishers. Now you do have a number of ways to work out the final place but using the model of the domestic play-off system.

So, with that in mind, using the last running of the Euros, these are the sides you would currently have. Belgium, Croatia, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Poland, Spain, Switzerland and Wales would go to Russia. The play-off’s would see Slovakia play Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland play Portugal for that final World Cup place.

Obviously each confederation would have to adopt a similar stance, and the crazy ‘half places’ wouldn’t even necessarily have to go. Oceania, for example, would still need to send their side to play-off, but at least there wouldn’t be a whole bunch of games to play before the disappointment of elimination.

Now, it wouldn’t make sense to have two years with no International games followed by two years with ten plus. With that in mind, you could stretch out the qualifying for the Euros to three seasons, and that’s where we get the space in our domestic schedule.

Now, after this World Cup, there are two years remaining until the next Euro’s so I cannot squeeze the fixtures over three seasons. That said, let’s assume we had implemented this new format, how would the fixtures work?

Following the 2016 Euro’s you would get the first qualification game for 2020 in October 2016.

Games two and three would come in June 2017, after the season ends. No tournament is running and so it would be mad not to take advantage of that.

Game four and five would be set up for October 2017 with game six coming the following March, before the 2018 World Cup.

Game seven and eight would come in October 2018, with nine and ten coming after the season in June 2019. Again, there is no tournament running, so why not?

October 2019 would set aside for the play-off’s and there you have your sides for the Euros. From the Euros, you find your sides for the following World Cup.

From an English point of view this now frees up time in the season to spread out the league and cup games and/or introduce a winter break. At the moment a European winter break starts around a week before Christmas. We could start ours the following week, with Boxing Day tradition still observed, with the added attraction of it being the final game before the break.

Let me know what you think.