The friendlies are a fitness building exercise that form an important part of the preparations for a season and rarely see a lower league player going in to challenges full tilt, where as in the cups you do in an effort to earn his team the once in a lifetime opportunity to play at Villa Park in the 2nd Round. There are 46 games that will define our season, potentially 49 with the playoffs. A Cup game which provides no contribution to those 46 games but the opportunity for additional bookings, red cards, and injuries is not a good idea when you've got a first team squad that is sitting at around 14 players (plus kids), and is only likely to be at 19 players plus kids come the start of the season. Going out to create more of these games and creating a fixture backlog is ridiculous, our players were ****ed enough this March without us throwing more games into the mix.
That wasn't really my point though, I said the Carling Cup is still relatively prestigious cup, I didn't say you had to play a full strengthed squad with your best players in the first few rounds, only when you face stronger opposition in the more advanced rounds
I'd play the reserves the whole way through. We don't have a trong enough squad to be risking any of the first XI (plus probably one or two on top of that). If the reserves win the early rounds then they deserve to play in the later rounds even if the opposition are bigger. Obviously if we weren't a club looking to go for promotion then we'd be as well sticking the first team in the Cups, but it's just not worth the risk of it for us.
Everybody in the Championship, League 1 and League 2 are aiming to get promotion to the next tier, if not there's no point playing the season at all
They don't all have to be expecting to make a serious challenge for it that season though. There'll be teams (especially newly promoted ones) that will be happy just to survive, and others who expect to be midtable. If you're in a promotion or relegation battle then you prioritise the league and don't do anything to compromise that because changing division is the thing that has the greatest chance of altering the club and its finances. If you're a midtable standard of side that's taking it as a season to build then you go for the cup runs to generate a bit of revenue to help you mount a stronger challenge the following season, and just to give the fans something to cheer about.
To a point yes they have been. But with the right manager in place those 10 players can be easily found. Dont panic. Dont panic.
you can't beat a bit of impotuss. i think there's some left in a jar in the shed but i might need to get some more.
People will cry either way on this kind of thing. When we lost to Crawley Humberside was inundated with people saying it was such a scandal that we lost having made to many changes, eventually Matt Dean asked "How come we beat Ipswich with the same number of changes then?" and "What if Koren played and broke his leg?" the caller he aimed those questions at had no reply at all.
Ticklers the most hilarious poster on here, its unintentional but hilarious all the same. Unbeleavable and seams are another two of his gems. But Ku De Ta is in a different class, can anyone remember what it was in regard to?
They should make up their minds, then. Either play their best team or play their worst team - not some mishmash.
I just googled 'ku de ta the french tickler not 606' and wouldn't you know, hit the jackpot. http://www.not606.com/showthread.php/141512-Barmby-suspended/page5
The point is that people would moan either way, they felt it was an outrage that we were knocked out having made several changes but if we played Koren and he got injured they would say "If we beat Ipswich with the reserves we obviously could have beat Crawley! Why was he playing?"
You have to rise above what people say and make a logical decision. You either want to win the thing or not. Try to win it or try to get knocked out. We seem to do not one thing or the other.
OK. Well with the NEW COC compettion first round draw to be made tomorrow and with Hull City a seeded team, these are the teams we can draw either home or away. Which one would you fancy and why then ? Accrington, Bradford, Burton, Bury, Chesterfield, Crewe, Fleetwood, Morecambe, Oldham, Port Vale, Preston, Rochdale, Rotherham, Scun.thorpe, Shrewsbury, York, Personally, i would like Rotherham Utd away as the first round is played W/C 13th August and would be Rotherhams first competative home game in there New stadium. NB. How the heck do Shrewsbury get into the northern draw ? I can guess why but it looks a tad silly to me. Bolton and Blackburn enter the competition along with the 13 PL teams who are not involved in Europe in round two which is played W/C 27th August.
York City for me, barring that a trip to Fleetwood (their ground isn't bad actually) or Chesterfield would suit me.
Fleetwood Town have a cracking home tie with Nottingham Forest. That could well be a sky tv game,, imo.
