As I write this, a mate of mine is in Turkey watching Stoke City play Beskitas.
It is the last game of the Europa League group stages and this mate of mine has been to three away games so far in the groups and the qualifiers.
Last week Stoke boss Tony Pulis announced to supporters that he was going to play a weakened team in the match. His side are already through to the last 32 and tonight’s result doesn’t really matter.
He made this announcement he said “so that fans who were going to Turkey knew that a full strength side wasn’t going to be played.”
Leaving aside the arguments surrounding this – it’s a load of nonsense for two reasons: 1) Travel plans would have been made way in advance of this (as another football supporting friend said about a trip to Barrow to watch his team “its not the sort of place you go by mistake.”) and 2) The fans that are going to Turkey 11 days before Christmas are the sort of fans who live for their club and wouldn’t care less what team was picked.
It does lead me to question something I have been thinking for a while: Are cup competitions pointless these days?
Gone are the days when the FA Cup was the biggest sporting event of the year, the Carling Cup is an inconvenience to most clubs and the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy (the only chance, most lower league clubs get to play at Wembley has been treated with contempt, most notably by Sheffield Wednesday boss Gary Megson, who got round the rules that teams have to play six of the team from the previous week by making three substitutions in the first 10 minutes of a game with Bradford.
This weakened team issue is not a new one, in previous Europa Leagues Gary Megson again – this blog is not attack a man I have a lot of time for – rested his Bolton squad ahead of a crucial relegation battle and Martin O’Neil gave the Aston Villa youth team a run out, ironically enough before a game with Stoke. Villa were gunning for a place in the top four at the time and they were two up in that game with the Potters with two minutes left. Unbelievably they were pegged back to 2-2 and ended up staggering home in the rest of the season.
Similarly Spurs attitude to the Europa League has been disdainful at best and downright disrespectful at worst, with a succession of young players have played and Tottenham are more or less out of the competition.
Of course, you can’t blame the managers. Well all know that at Premier league level the monetary rewards are massive, but that is equally true lower down too. Taking Sheffield Wednesday as the example, there would a lot more money, long term in the club beginning their rise back up the leagues than there would be in a JPT final win.
Manager’s often say they want to win every game they play, but do they? Would Harry Redknapp care if Tottenham lose tomorrow? Would Tony Pulis mind too much if Stoke lose tonight?
And if the answer is no, then how much longer – really – do the cups have left?
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