The EFL Cup is useless. There, I said it.
Hear me out before brandishing me as a football cynic. When I say “useless”, I believe that it’s useless for all the teams in top-division English football (the prestigious Premier League) because it serves as a mere consolatory piece of silverware.
The top dogs generally lift the EFL Cup and the viewership comes in matches limited to the Premier League sides, making it unjust for the other lower division sides in the contest.
Now I’m gonna provide a simple analysis as to why the EFL Cup needs to be removed as a tournament from top flight English football with 4 solid reasons which are as follows:
#1. Unjust Competition For Lower Ranked Teams:
Everybody loves a giant killing but it’s mostly when the giant fields its 2nd tier or youth side against a lower ranked side due to the lack of importance shown towards a perceived weaker opposition (pertaining to either the 2nd, 3rd or 4th tier of English football namely The Championship, League One and League 2).
In terms of ethics, I won’t refer to it as disrespectful but the prize money offered by the EFL Cup is a mere 100,000 pounds which is the average weekly wage of a top-flight player.
For a lower ranked side to win this money could prove extremely beneficial for their youth system whereas this amount can be easily looked over by any top English side such as Man United, Man City or Chelsea. It’s about the time the cards are dealt fairly.
#2. The EFL Cup Is One Of The Reasons For Poor European Performances:
Midweek EFL Cup matches are absolutely unnecessary when the footballing world is well aware of the tight schedule of the Premier League sides, which play almost every week with no Christmas break and the top 4 or 5 teams regularly engaging in Champions League action.
With marquee matches in later stages of the game, it becomes almost paramount to field your strongest side to win the game and then to accommodate that with a weekend game and another midweek European game (in the following week) in the Champions League, the players get no resting time and that fatigue accounts for poor performance in Europe, much evident by the fact that the last time an English side won the Champions League was Chelsea in 2012.
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An added competition is the FA Cup, which adds more matches totaling over 65 matches for any team. A simpler solution would be to make EFL Cup as a competition only for lower ranked sides from tier 1 to tier 4.
#3. It Provides No Proper Stage To Display Young Talent:
Fielding the players who mostly come as substitutes or fielding your youth players against lower ranked teams is almost useless because it gives them no exposure to play against top-flight teams.
This accounts to a rather weak bench and results in incoherent and inconsistent squad depth, making the top sides vulnerable against European and domestic top flight teams when the regular starters are unavailable due to injury.
Add that to a factor if a regular starter gets injured in an EFL Cup game, only to become unavailable for the following week’s domestic and you have a shit storm on your hands.
#4. We Have the FA Cup Already Which Makes The EFL Cup Redundant:
736 teams participated in the FA Cup 2016-17, including 644 “non-division” lower ranked sides to compete for the biggest tournament in English football.
This makes the EFL Cup look like FA Cup’s grandchild. When there already exists a domestic cup, why is there a need for another domestic “league cup”, making English football scenario the only one in Europe’s top 5 with a League Cup and a domestic cup competition.
So why this unnecessary hoopla for a tournament among the 4 flights? Why not leave it to the 2nd to 4th division sides and give them more incentive to look forward to?
Something the FA and English Football League would perhaps explain and shed some light on.
So there you have it, folks. Here were our reasons as to why the EFL Cup needs to bid goodbye to top-tier English football.
Think you have a contrasting reason as to why the cup should stay? Feel free to share your opinion in the comments section!
Image Credits: Google Images
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