All over the country, on Tuesday and Wednesday night, second and third string Football League and Premiership players pitted their wits against each other in this season’s ‘even more devalued than last season’s’ Capital One Cup Second Round – what used to be simply known as the Football League Cup. And as the rookie and first-team fringe players set off for the match, or tucked into their pre-game meals, tens of thousands of football fans took money out of cash points all over the land. Fans that these football matches ultimately exist for – games to entertain a paying public.
The League Cup has produced some memorable night’s in Brentford’s history, okay, we can’t boast a Final appearance as our League One rivals Bradford can after their heroics last season, but keenly contested games against Everton, Liverpool, Newcastle United, Tottenham, Forest [at their peak] and Swansea immediately spring to mind… some of those matches are still vivid despite them taking place thirty years ago. And some older fans than me will recall a narrow defeat at Old Trafford in the early 1970s. However, after Tuesday night’s defeat at Derby, I’m not sure I will ever go to a League Cup match ever again, and I wouldn’t blame you for not bothering either.
In my eyes, the trend that is permeating down from the Premiership, that sees managers pre-determining the probable results of certain fixtures, then picking a team accordingly, is tantamount to cheating the fans out of their hard earned money. I feel more than slightly deceived the morning after Derby if I’m honest – not because of the team that was picked necessarily – but it is evidently clear that most clubs aren’t taking these ties seriously, so why should I? It is the same with the FA Cup and, if it wasn’t for the ‘six players from the previous Saturday rule’, almost certainly the Johnsons Paint too.
Perhaps the manager of football clubs should sit down with the fans before the season and go through the fixture list so we can at least know which games are worth taking a half-day for, battling through the rush-hour traffic for, falling out with the missus over… or missing a League match for as it is chance to see your side play against a ‘bigger club’.
Ultimately, there will be financial repercussions, and/or rule changes to protect the trophy’s integrity – we will either be told that the Football League are unable to find a sponsor for the tournament next season, or the year after, which may see the Premiership teams threaten to withdraw all together, or football clubs will be forced to field a measurable quota of first team players. Either way, irreparable damage has been done to our game’s cup competitions.
The double standards are difficult to fathom too. Brentford fans were told before the season started that Uwe Rosler had asked for higher quality opponents so that his first-team squad were tested and ready for the season, or stretched against higher ranking players, yet a month later, a potentially morale-boosting Cup tie at Championship Derby County, a match that ten years ago would have been one of the highlights of the season, is deemed suitable only for the Development squad kids and the ‘Saturday team’ substitutes after the Bees’ boss made ten changes to the team that beat Walsall.
This isn’t a dig at Uwe, he has to do what he feels is right to ensure promotion, and I’m sure he will face awkward questions about ‘no cup run either’ if we fail to go up this season, but I certainly object to being patronized about our ‘excellent vocal support in the second half despite being 5-0 down’ etc, etc… That was gallows humour, we were simply laughing in the face of adversity, the mind-set we’ve had to adopt as Brentford fans down the years to make coming to watch games slightly justifiable. Basically, I expect more from Brentford these days with the squad we’ve assembled, or, at least more honesty.
Please, if we are drawn away in the FA Cup First Round and the club really can’t be arsed, then use the Loyalty Scheme to give us an indication as to whether it’s worth travelling to… If they’d said it was minus 25 points to those going to Pride Park… at least we’d have known not to fill the car up with £60 of petrol.
Dave Lane
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Dave – along with you I was amoung one of the 500 or so Bees fans who made the trip up the M1 to last nights game at Derby and I’ve been trying to rationalise whether I feel short changed by what went on or not.
Of course nobody likes to see their team professionally embarrassed by the opposition and we certainly were last night but I don’t think that is at the nub of it. It’s more to do with whether OUR club treated us as fans with a level of disrespect by playing what was effectively a second string team with a few juniors thrown in for good measure in a competitive game that they knew a good percentage of Bees fans would attend.
If you ask most Bees fans prior to last nights trip what team they would expect to have seen fielded most would have expected a team full of changes for the game, although probably not to the sweeping extent that we saw.
In defence of Rossler, he knows all too well that this season the Cup competitions are almost irrelevant – it’s all about promotion. So I don’t blame him for the team he picked. However, I do believe he will be surprised how easily we capitulated and would have learnt quite a lot about some of our players. The performance certainly puts a lie to the argument that we have strength in depth and cover for every position.
Should the Club have been more open and informed those intent on travelling the full extent of the changes in advance. Well, professional football doesn’t work like that – you don’t let the opposition know in advance what your intentions are, even if the fans have to suffer.
I am certainly not an apologist for the Club and I do feel sorry for everybody who gave up the time, effort and money to attend (including my 8 year old son)!
I do think you touch on something that the Club have started and should develop and that is the loyalty scheme. None of us fans want to be taken for granted and perhaps the Club should start to think about rewarding the supporters (especially those that consistently travel away) in a more enterprising fashion. A free away ticket for every 10 away games attended in a season if tickets are bought through the club for instance.
Most Bees fans I spoke to were philosophical about what occurred last night and expect ‘normal service’ to resume on Saturday – I for one think that Uwe and the Club will have learnt from last night and won’t want to see a repeat of that in any circumstances – the team selection for AFC Wimbledon next tuesday should be interesting.
I agree, it is a tricky one… Enjoyed reading your reply though. I guess the crux of my gripe is the devalued state of Cup competitions rather the team selection itself… As I say, if the clubs themselves aren’t taking them seriously and fielding weakened teams, why should the supporters take them seriously? Intentionally Fielding a team that is unlikely to win can never be acceptable if you are expecting people to travel half way up the country however.
Dave – your piece sums up Tuesday night perfectly. The whole thing was certainly a very odd experience. As soon as we heard the line-ups and realised how seriously Derby were taking it, it was obvious what was going to happen.
It was a very strange experience watching a game we knew we couldn’t win and that it was only a matter of time before Derby scored – and scored again.
I knew we wouldn’t be seeing the likes of Clayton, Adam and Harlee and knew our team for the Dagenham game but thought that given the level of opposition, we would see some first-team regulars.
The look of bemusement on my 13-year-old son’s face was sad to see – the Everton game was one of his Bees-supporting highlights and the defeat at Birmingham one of his most bitter memories. But at least in that game we couldn’t have done more to try to win it.
Clearly the League Cup is very low on our list of priorities but I don’t subscribe to the theory that cup runs harm your League form – the FA Cup matches last season were not the reason we didn’t go up.
Last season around the time of the first game with Chelsea and the replay in February we went from 3rd. to 7th.