No Business Like Show Business?

After the news of yet another possible new ruling in Football, TorontoPool and Jerry write…

Football League chairmen tomorrow are to discuss the possibility of scrapping draws in favour of penalty shoot outs.

If this radical proposal were to be pushed through, it would spell the end to bore draws, but would also take away the pride of a hard-earned point that a small team wins against a bigger team if they battle through against the odds.

Bournemouth manager, Kevin Bond spoke to The Daily Echo and asked ‘Why can’t we just have a draw?’ and that ‘I’m very open-minded and I think certain laws of the game need to move with the times but that would be too much of a drastic measure.’ Maybe he’s so heated becuase his Cherries side need all the points they can get at the moment!

From a personal point of view, I see this as a blatant attempt by The Football League to steal a bit of a march on The Premiership in respect to coming up with news ideas, much to Sepp Blatter *spits* delight I`m sure. The man wants to single handedly ruin Football it seems with his new schemes and leaving behind the heritage and tradition of the game we all love.

The reason this has come about is Football is in the entertainment business – a business that always requires change – by definition. Well sorry, but Football is different. We don`t need change. Or do the main men at the FA feel the need to attract young kiddies to the game who get all excited by a penalty shoot out. Aren`t they just happy that these youngsters buy their Manure shirts with “Ronaldo 7” on the back of them and make the rich clubs richer?

The fact of the matter is, for struggling teams – or even promotion chasers like ourselves – one solitary point could mean the difference between promotion/relegation or staying in the division for one more year. Games that would usually come down to the end of the season – see West Brom for a recent example – could be decided by pure chance. What fan would want their team relegated – and therefore lose out on 20+ million pounds in TV revenue – because their central defender isn’t confident at taking a multi-million pound penalty in front of the Kop on the final day of the season.

If this happens Mister Blatter, it will be the death of football as we know it. Then again, we already have Chelsea as a top team in the country.

Where would this leave fans wanting to use public transport after a game? I travel back home on the train after a game and if penalties were to decide a game, I for one would have to try another route home – much to my inconvenience.

Players are getting fitter, this much is true but could they stand the mental pressure of a penalty shoot out after a 90 minute (or possibly more) game? I hear managers moaning about fatigue after a cup match for weeks: what would they be like if penalties were a regular occurrence?!

One final point: I wouldn`t fancy listening to the radio and hearing that Blackpool were ‘playing for pens` away at Norwich in a league game (am I preempting a fixture next season maybe?) for example: give us the point please!

For the record, there has been no time scale placed upon this decision, which should be irrelevant anyway, because this cannot happen.