With the rising number of injuries, and lack of quality football around this time, I say yay. It's time to get with the times, not having a winter break is just silly, it's even sillier that rather than having a break, we intentionally increase the rate of games and pile the fixtures up!
Would it really be such a bad thing to give the players 2 weeks off from the 18th to the 1st? Just do it already. Everyone says tradition tradition, let's start a new tradition of a 2 week break and restarting the league on New Year's
Even if tradition was the argument for not having a winter break then surely we could still have games on Boxing Day and New Year's Day but have a 2 week break from the 2nd Jan to the 14th instead. The only valid concern I can see against a winter break is the amount of fixtures in the calendar and the need to either get rid of the League Cup (at least for European qualified teams if nothing else) or reducing the league down to 18. But surely there is another way around it...
TBH I don't get the point of intentionally piling games up, ok keep boxing day, but then get rid of the weekend fixtures, having to play 3 games in the space of 7 days is just ****ing crazy. And then even next week, we have the cup, and then they've decided to add a mix-week game, what for, there's no need for the mid week game but they just enjoy piling it on.
What is the bloody point of playing in both the league and FA cups? I totally agree, it's like they are pilling up games for the sake of it and the majority of Prem teams will only focus on the Prem and possibly the FA cup. But agree with the OP on the winter break, making the players play through winter and add more games at the end of the year is just foolish. They tire out and injure the players and then they get surprised why England are toilet when it comes to the Internationals. Rooney might be 30 but he's looks closer to 40!
I agree about the League cup. Premier league teams should be pulled out of that competition, partly because of the fixture pile up and partly because it would give Championship teams a chance to qualify for Europe, which would encourage better players to join them and help increase revenue for that league. I love the games over Christmas and would be loathed to see those taken away, but I do agree that there should be a break from 2nd -14th Jan. **** knows we have enough international breaks in the season, if we can endure that as fans, then a winter break knowing that the players would be rested and recharged, would be welcomed by players, managers and fans alike.
There wouldn't be a winter break. All of the teams who suffer from fixture congestion would be flying off playing friendly tournaments in Asia or America.
Agree with this. Only issue is that League Cup is almost over by Xmas, so we'd still have the issue of when to fit in the games cancelled in Jan. Unless they start the FA Cup earlier, but for the lower leagues it starts stupidly early in the season already.
Yep I don't know how you could get around the FA cup fixtures. Unless you brought premier league teams in at round 4 maybe ?
For the league cup rather than taking PL clubs out, just do something like Spain, let our complete reserve-youth team play in that competition like how the B teams of major Spanish sides play in the lower leagues. Most teams already do that, so just make it something official whereby the first team squad is not allowed to participate, but those in reserves and youth can, win-win for everybody, the competition still has all the teams, and the big sides, and the big clubs get to have their B team and youngsters get some valuable experience in a live match day setting rather than just out in the reserve league.
In general though, I don't understand what the league cup is for? We already have one major domestic cup competition in the FA Cup, so why have another one? Doesn't really make sense to have 2 cup competitions, yeah there's slight format changes like having to play home-away for the semifinals, and no replays and instead playing extra time and going to penalties, but other than, what's the point if you already have one domestic cup competition? It's like deciding to set up another league while the EPL is also going on, what's the point?
Currently a team can play 2 qualifying games, 6 group matches, last 16, last 6, semis and final (that's 15 matches or 13 minimum) in the CL. Liverpool, Forest and Villa played 9 matches to win it in 1970's and 1980's...that is an increase of 6 matches! Currently you can play 2 qualifying games, 6 group games, last 32, last 16, last 8, semi's and final (that's 17 matches or 15 minimum) Liverpool, Ipswich and Spurs played 12 to win it in the 1970's and 1980's...that's an increase of 5 matches. But because everyone has bought into the CL this stupidity goes unchallenged ... presumably cos money is everything...yet here we are talking about pulling out of a cup competition cos we play too many games. To be honest there ain't enough to go round.
But then you've got the issue of a short summer break without enough rest and/or long enough preseason, particularly during a world cup/european championship/copa america
