FA Cup

[stationcafe]

They will never give FA Cup winners a CL place. The Prem's 4th place team would have to give up their place, English teams would do worse overall and potentially lose a place in the CL. It's a romantic idea but would just make English football weaker.

Europa League is still a decent tournament, granted there's a few ropey sides in the group stages but the knockout rounds are decent and it's taken more seriously in other leagues. Recent winners have been Seville, Chelsea, Atletico, Porto, Shakhtar, Zenit… those are all CL quality teams.

The FA just need to put a bit more thought into their scheduling

[Shepherds Mush]

Champions league should be scrapped back to just the winers of the European leagues in a knockout tournament.

FA Cup winners AND League Cup winners into UEFA cup - knockout tournament

Can only ever watch from around the quarter finals of these competitions now....absolute borefests up until then

[jmelanie]

The fact of the matter is that its the Premier League teams who draw the biggest audiences. Remember ITV Sport's attempt to show Championship games live? That failed due to lack of demand. As much as you say that a few of us would like to see smaller teams like Cambridge v Luton or even Blythe Spartans v Birmingham, more people support Arsenal and Hull so the viewing figures would be higher and ultimately, that's what counts...

Not sure this is correct. The Championship and a knockout FA Cup are not the same thing.

[72bus]

i'd love it all to go back to what it was . european cup , cup winners cup and eufa cup . but its all about the money and tv football overload . who really wants to watch dnipro v hull city on a thursday at 5pm. only people from hull i expect

[stanistheman]

Football has moved on and the FA Cup used to be a money spinner, even for the big clubs who could earn £2m or more, which was far more than their share of TV money and a large %age of their gate receipts.
Now the money comes from Sky and other TV companies so they dont need the FA Cup so much.

I dont think the winners should get a Champions League place either. I do agree it needs some sort of revamp including limiting games to Saturday and Sunday and save Wembley for the final, but the magic will never be restored.

[qprvoyager10]

The fact of the matter is that its the Premier League teams who draw the biggest audiences. Remember ITV Sport's attempt to show Championship games live? That failed due to lack of demand. As much as you say that a few of us would like to see smaller teams like Cambridge v Luton or even Blythe Spartans v Birmingham, more people support Arsenal and Hull so the viewing figures would be higher and ultimately, that's what counts...

But the only people who are mainly going to watch Arsenal v Hull are the supporters of them teams. No one else really cares coz you see them type of games regular and its half the 1st team out. But everyone will rather watch Blythe vs Birmingham. I don't mean 2 lowly teams like Cambridge v Luton. But most people rather watch a Premier League/Championship club against a non league team or League 2 team

[Nick]

Watched that AFC Wimbledon v Liverpool game the other day. By far the best game Ive seen in a long time, not on ability but entertainment. The way Wimbledon was throwing everything at Liverpool made it a real end to end game and you just couldn't predict the out come and could've easily have been an upset.