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like any of these ideas?

http://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/sport/the-fa-cup-is-dying-heres-how-to-save-it?utm_content=buffer153a7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

1. Seeded, no draw
2. Pick your opponent
3. Cap ticket prices for teams in top two divisions
4. Punish clubs for resting players
5. Fix the semis
6. Make the final special

Heard the pick your opponent idea mooted for the league cup this week.
First time I have ever heard it mentioned in a football context, quite like the idea.

Semi's back to biggest sensible (geographically speaking) available neutral ground, and the final back to 3pm on Saturday (with no other games being played) would help.

Whichever option makes the competiton matter more to the biggest clubs I think will be the most effective solution. The FA Cup still matters to the lower league teams in the competition.

Capping ticket prices for the top two divisions seems like the easiest to implement. Would packing out the grounds exert pressure on teams to play a strong side? Probably not but you can't force City to field Sterling, Aguero and De Bruyne on a rainy December evening in Yeovil and tbh the smaller clubs probably don't particularly want to play against full strength sides when they have a much better shot at pinging a replay against a weaker starting eleven.

I don't know ticket prices are for FA Cup games at premiership grounds but if they're charging the same prices as they do for league games and they're fielding a weaker product then it seems fair to cap the ticket prices

Admission prices for FA Cup games have to be agreed by both teams

45% of net gate receipts each to home and away teams, 10% to FA for prize pool etc

i know LCFC has charged £10-15 for home ties against lower division opponents

i think, especially for the third round just after Xmas, that the prospect of seeing your reserve team play is a bigger deterrent than most reasonable price points


i found the "pick your opponent" idea fascinating

The problem is too many teams who see it as an annoyance, so let them opt out.

Make entering it optional, but if you do then there is the minimum quality of team threshold (must start 6 players from previous league game rule).

Either big teams take it seriously, or they don't play (in which case it shows the thing may not be worth saving).

How would you do it?  Seems to be two schools of thought.
Lowest ranked team picks first, work up the list until all teams gone or
Random draw for home teams and they select opponent.

Can see TV loving either option - each club has a little war room (bit like NFL draft), working out preferred ties etc.

i suppose i would give the 32 lowest ranked sides in the 3rd round draw the choice, lowest picks first. could also give them the choice to play it home or away

interesting to see if Salford would pickaway at Man U or home to Dag and Redbridge (expect the former)

repeat for 4th round

conventional draw 5th round on

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also include the 6+ players had to have been in the 18 for the last league game as well

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immediately makes it more interesting

You have to make the Cup matter to big teams, so I'd tinker with some hybrid of 'win the FA cup and you get to either guarantee you'll escape relegation, or it's a guaranteed champions league place'. If the winner already has gtd he champions league, then runner up gets whatever the perk is. That would not only make everyone have an interest in the cup, but would also pique the interest of clubs fighting relegation/going for champions league who have been eliminated.

In recent times City have adopted a low price for early rounds of the FA Cup. Both home games last season were priced at £15.00 for an adult and peanuts for a kid and drew capacity crowds.  By way of comparison the home game against Barcelona was £50ish depending on seat.

In all seriousness if the FA Cup really needs this sort of gimmickry to make it 'interesting' then it's already beyond saving.

Happily I don't believe it does. The fact that some clubs choose to prioritise other competitions is an issue on occasion (Southampton last season comes to mind)but that is their loss, not the FA Cup's.

Return the Final to it's rightful place as a game played on a distinctly FA Cup Saturday, and return the SemiFinals to provincial grounds and we're all good IMHO

Having a strictly Knockout format European Cup Winner's Cup would be nice too.

TBH one way to sex up the FA Cup would be to get rid of the League Cup. Most teams have something to play for in the league and one cup competition is a pain, two is a real chore.

agree with all of this.

might as well just have a raffle to choose the winner if we are going to start picking teams.

i do like the idea of having to pick 6 players from your  last league match though.

This draw idea would be good for the first year but year on year you'd find the draw would always look the same?  Biggest teams at home to minnows.  Championship teams playing each other or lower ranked premier teams.  And Stoke shall play West Brom.

You can't force people to try, even if you want to force people to play the same number of players etc.

I think champion's league place to the winner is the best way, but I can't see it happening.

Champs League spot for the winner is a good idea.  Personally I don't like that you can finish 3rd or 4th and end up in a Champions League, seems illogical to me.    Give the 3rd PL CL spot to the FA Cup winner and the 4th PL CL slot to the League Cup winner.  Make both cups interesting again.

Nice idea romantic wise.  Will never happen in reality because it will affect the english co-efficient too much potentially and might cause us to lose one of the 4 spots with potential poor teams binking a cup and being totally out of their depth in Champions league.

The big boys are doing a good job in their own right of losing the 4th spot in recent years!

Far too much football these days IMO.

Scrap the group stages of the CL and the League Cup.

Would immediately make the FA Cup more interesting.

Arry's Portsmouth in the Champions League?!

What about Wigan winning it and going down? Or McLeish's Birmingham City?

I quite like the idea of 6 bonus points. In the Prem, that could be £5m in TV money alone. Could keep a team up or win them the league.

Not sure if serious.

How on earth can you countenance a League position being decided by a Cup match?
What happens if a Championship team wins the cup?

Love both cups as a Bradford city fan.  I'd say we can definitely lose the league cup though.  I don't think the FA cup has lost much.  When the final comes round, you don't get many fans of the finalists going I can't be arsed with this.  If some teams want to take it easier in the 3rd round, it simply doesn't bother me, and gives us more of a chance, gives smaller teams the opportunity to share some of the wealth etc.  There just doesn't seem much wrong to me.

Stop referring to the "magic of the FA cup" grows tiresome.

I just don't think it's the big boys who don't value it anymore. As a fan international weeks and FA weeks just aren't as appealing as a full PL fixture list

Honestly, why not?  Chances are they don't win if the big boys take it seriously.  I don't see why not regardless, spread some of the wealth.   All had been in the Prem or were Prem teams at the time, you're going to say they can't be in the CL if they finished 4th or better?   Are you going to tell Tighty Leicester can't be in the CL next season?

At which stage does the FA cup require change?  Up to the 3rd round nothing has changed imo in the last 40 years and every club involved pre 3rd round loves the event as much as ever.  3rd round is the dream round for most of the teams in it.  I think the only potential issue is too many games are not played at 3pm Saturday for whatever reason.  4th round onwards it is taken pretty seriously by virtually every club.  Semis will always be played at Wembley now just because of finances of paying off the cost of building the new Wembley.  The FA are never going to change that rule.

The final itself probably needs to be made more of a stand alone all day event on TV like it was in the 1980's.  

There is very little that needs changing with the FA cup imo.

As for giving a Champs League spot to the winner i am pretty sure UEFA wouldn't allow this even if the FA did.

This for me.

I watched my team lose to a non-league side this year, so the FA Cup doesn't need anything changing structurally to retain everything that makes it special, IMO.

Something's I would do though:

Bring back replays, especially for the Final, and the possibility of second replays.

Play the semi-finals at the Millenium Stadium, rather than Wembley.  Even though I benefitted from seeing a Wembley semi-final in 2008, it did feel a bit like the game didn't belong there.

I agree that the final needs to be a 3pm kickoff on a Saturday after the Premier League season has ended, so I'd make that change of the 6 suggested.

The draw needs to stay totally random.  I think competitions such as the Champions League should go back to this, at least for the knockout stages.

Much as I like the idea of seeing full-strength Premier League teams playing, I don't see a practical way to make this enforceable.  Typically, you still end up facing a team full of internationals when the reserve sides are played anyway.

The much bigger fix is needed to the whole League structure as the financial imbalance between Premier League and Football League is getting worse with every passing season.  The Championship is now a league of 'have parachute payments' or 'don't have parachute payment' teams which makes it virtually impossible for a genuine fairytale story to occur anymore (even Bournemouth last season needed massive financial backing, despite them being a 'small' club in infrastructure).

"BBC to show Exeter v Liverpool on Friday Jan 8 from 7.55pm. Last train back to Liverpool that day? 6.25pm"

Not doing things like this might be a start.

Disagree with the bolded bit.

The Champions League groups stage fatures a lot of uncompetitive and dull games as it is, there has to be an advantage for finishing top rather than second or even more games will have nothing at stake.

Don't see the problem. The majority of Liverpool fans will be happy it's on TV and they get to watch it rather than being 1 of the majority of games that aren't on TV and kick-off at 3pm on the Saturday.

Apparently, if it was a 3pm kick off on the Saturday they still miss the last train back to Liverpool because it is earlier at weekends..:)