4th Champions League Spot

[topscorer]

The FA are thinking about giving the 4th spot to the FA Cup winners.

Here's an idea:

FA and League Cup winners together with 4th & 5th place finishers in playoffs for the 4th spot.

FA Cup winners against 5th place and League Cup against 4th place for one leg semi finals at Wembley and then a final. Losers get the Europa spaces.

Get rid of FA Cup replays and two legs in League Cup games to reduce fixtures.

[BobTheCharmer]

I'm totally against the idea of getting rid of cup replays. It's how a lot of clubs make enough money to keep ticking over. In reality it's only the clubs already in Europe who complain about the extra fixtures, which is a tiny percentage of the clubs that enter the competition. I would still have the play to you win senerio. Replay after replay without penalties. The teams in Europe generally have big enough squads to rotate even if it involves playing youngsters.

The ideas of reducing the league to 18 teams, getting rid of replays and having winter breaks is aimed at the elite few and the national team. **** them. Football is about everyone.

I don't want there to be a 4th champions league place at all. It certainly shouldn't go to cup winners. Stopping having fa cup semis at Wembley would give the cup a boost. Keep Wembley for finals only. The fa cup is great as it is.

[Norbs]

Play offs are for money and not the benefit of the team that occupied the first place out of automatic qualification. If being in it guaranteed 50% of the revenue brought from qualifying for the CL then it would be a softener but overall I'm not keen on the idea.

Bumping the prize pot in the FA Cup would make much more sense if they're trying to revitalise it. I just checked and the winners get £3.4m which is a drop in the ocean. Make the winnING prize £20m and then you'll see teams taking it seriously again

[Leyton388]

Can't see the premier League agreeing to that. The 4th place is at risk anyway with how poor English clubs have been in europe.

[shanks69]

Isn't it up to uefa as to who qualifies for the cl

[Assassin]

The stinks of the sweet f a not being happy with clubs fielding understrength teams

I agree with BTC with regard to replays, these are the life blood of everton and the other smaller teams

[Alex]

Champions League place shouldn't be awarded to a side that can string together 6 victories. I know it's a bit more than that, but it's short. League takes a bit of hard work and consistency.

[Bender]

Shows how devalued the FA Cup has become due to money ruining the game.

[BobTheCharmer]

Champions League place shouldn't be awarded to a side that can string together 6 victories. I know it's a bit more than that, but it's short. League takes a bit of hard work and consistency.

Although winning the European cup used to involve pretty much that amount of effort.

[Exiled_red]

Champions League place shouldn't be awarded to a side that can string together 6 victories. I know it's a bit more than that, but it's short. League takes a bit of hard work and consistency.

[G]

The whole point is to reduce fixtures so they want to add more fixtures, figures! Not everybody ends up playing replays so it doesn't benefit everybody to get rid of them. I'd like get rid of them though and the two legged semis in the league cup. Teams in Europe should be made to play their cup fixtures away from home so the small teams get a windfall from the visit of a big team. Teams in Europe should be able to opt out of the league cup too if they want.

[shanks69]

Although winning the European cup used to involve pretty much that amount of effort.

But you had go through a full league season to get the honour of making that competition not 6 games.

[ChesterDave]

Cup replays should stay. They are so few anyway that it is a nonsense to suggest they clog up the fixture list. As a compromise they could I suppose ditch them for the later rounds.

So far including yesterday only 7 replays for 5 different teams. The third round for Premier League teams and 75% of them have not played a replay yet!

And a system whereby, theoretically, a team from the Championship getting a Champions League berth?

[ChesterDave]

Oh, and in addition, I don't think the coefficient issue is going to be a problem. Not for a long time anyway. Italt needs to outperform England by 3.095 points to overtake us and have 4 spots for 2017/18 (2016/17 is fixed on current numbers)

At the moment England are actually 0.209 ahead. Roma look sure to go out having to go to Real and overhaul and 2 goal first leg defeat. Juve have to play Bayern so no easy task at all.

Napoli lost at Villerael 1-0 in their first leg, Lazio a decent enough 1-1 away at Galatasaray. I'd expect Spurs to go through v Fiorentina after drawing 1-1 away, Can see 4 or 5 Italian teams going out.

Next 2 seasons are largely similar performances for us both but the season after that Italy loses a season where they outperformed us by 6 points.

[Exiled_red]

I think that the fixture congestion is only a problem for the sides in Europe. for the rest of the sides the extra game doesn't make much difference.

PL sides have 38 league games,
To get to the League Cup final would be 7 games (sides in Europe enter a round later). Getting to the FA Cup final is 6 games (with no replays)

A PL side not in Europe getting to two finals would play 51 games (maybe 1 or 2 more with replays), but that almost never happens, and a typical PL club would probably play about 45 games in total.

It is Europe that makes the difference, if you make the group stage of the CL or Europa league that's 6 games (more if you need to go through qualifiers) even if you go out after the group stage and go out early in the FA and league cups the minimum number of games you will play is 46 which is close to the maximum that any other PL club not in europe will play. Obviously if you want to be successful you will need to play more games.

I think that the only PL sides who suffer because of FA Cup replays are those in Europe which are generally the bigger clubs. If fixture congestion is really an issue then it gives an advantage to sides who aren't in Europe which should mean that there is more chance of 'smaller' teams winning the cups. Which I am in favour of.

But if you look at the winners of the FA Cup over the last 20 years only two winners (Portsmouth and Wigan) haven't been one of the top clubs. The league cup has a better record, but over the last 10 years it too has been dominated by the big clubs, so I don't see that it is such an issue for these clubs.

Regarding 4th CL spot Even if it went to the Cup winners, based on the recent winners of the FA Cup very little would change in terms of the teams that are in the CL. League performance has to be the overall factor for determining who deserves to be in the CL.