The Carling Cup

Has it has its day?

With all Premier League fielding second string teams, its lost any sense of pride in winning the competition for supporters, who dismiss this tournament as meaningless once their club has been dumped out and would much prefer their clubs to concentrate on securing their Premier League status, or the glory of maybe securing a CL place.

Personally, if we are to compete in a competition, i want us to be competative and try and win it, however, with the amount of games and financial priorities seemingly more important these days to most clubs, i feel that the CC has become a relic of the past and should be either revamped in some way, or discontinued altogether.

Your thoughts on the CC.

At the start of each season all clubs who want to be in it and take it seriously should apply to be in it, if they want to use it to 'play the kids' or 'use the squad' then they should be told to fuck off.

Ask the Brum fans what they think, 1st trophy for how long? and they would rather have stayed in the prem.

Some of the players who have had games last night, and there will be some tonight aswell, dont have any chance of a first team spot with their respected clubs. I'd make it Prem team free, but that might take the glamour it had left and make it a bigger joke than it already is.

The main problem for me Si, is the pressure that clubs and managers are under these days to stay in the Premier League, to secure their financial stability and a peripheral competition for which the CC has become, is now longer an attractive priority, even if it means silverware, money has become more important than glory sadly.

Spot on Daz, if Carling put up a £50m kitty everyone would want to win it, sadly that is what is attractive to clubs. Hearing the tones of Warnock when qpr went out 1st round made me sick, if he thinks his players would rather look at a healthy bank ballance than a Cup Winners medal then its a sorry state of affairs.

I was listening to 5live the other day and the discussion got onto how much was earned by clubs going into the chumps league, then compared it with the Europa winnings, the diference is staggering. you get more for making the group stages of the CL than winning the EL. One of the panelists went into a fit of rage over spuds europa squad picks for this year, concluding that if the CC, EL and even the FA Cup would be defunct in 5 years time if something was'nt done about the way clubs/managers treat them with contempt.

even with a european spot up for grabs, it isn't ever going to be in favour with any prem teams and plenty of others fighting for promotion, or against relegation, from their respective leagues.

everything is about money these days and you can't win enough from this competition to cover a relegation or failed promotion.

on the other hand, you can't offer such financial incentives to make it worthwhile as then that money will just go to a big club.

maybe us it as qualification for a replacement for the old cup winners cup, but europe probably doesn't want another competition that the big clubs snub.

The problem is that the Euro spot up for grabs is in the Europa League, which is in itself a second tier competition. But then it's the same with the FA Cup. I find it laughable that winning a trophy, originally the pinnacle of footballing achievement, can be overshadowed by trying to finish fourth in the league. And I blame it all on the nonsense that is Champions League qualification.

Back in the day, the European Cup was the league champions and that was it. The European Cup Winners' Cup was for the FA Cup and League cup winners. They were the only routes into Europe, which included prestige and some money.

So now maybe what we should look to do is change how we qualify for the premium Euro competition: Make the cup winners into automatic qualifying places! So we'd have the league, FA Cup and Carling Cup winners into the CL, with second in the league taking the slot for a qualification round, with it being offered to 3rd or 4th depending on who wins the cups. This would inject a huge sense of urgency into teams to win it, because it would unlock the door to the untold riches of the CL. And more importantly, it would make it possible for any team to get there, not just the same ones every year. Then we offer our 3 Europa places to the losing finalists in the cups and onto places in the league.



Or maybe not. Maybe we should let the CC be left to clubs up to and including the second tier...

I've always liked this competition and playing weakened teams can be an interesting game of cat and mouse, especially now that we're in the position to do the same.

if you are playing chumps league, maybe you should be barred from the competition?

maybe exclude europa teams as well so that someone new gets into europe the next season and clubs actually think they might have a chance of winning so they might field stronger teams.

leopold wrote:The problem is that the Euro spot up for grabs is in the Europa League, which is in itself a second tier competition.

Possibly the only thing said on talk sport that I agree with, but the way to get any sort of ambition into the Europa League is that the winner gets a berth in the Champions League opening qualifying round. Makes it worth winning then, with the possible knock on effect that the Carling Cup winner gets into the Europa League?

I think we are going to fall into the "playing the kids" fold tonight and while I'm not surprised I will still be disappointed if we go out.