No Deal!!

As you may have read yesterday, the Football League have proposed radical rule changes to abolish draws in the Football Leagues and replace them with a Penalty Shootout.

This proposal has sparked fury across the country with fans of ‘The Beautiful Game’ who all agree that should this rule change actually happen, football in the lower-reaches of the Leagues would suffer tremendously.

Simon Grayson has had his say on the situation and the former Leicester player gave a firm thumbs down to the proposal – even if his boss and Blackpool Chairman, Karl Oyston, is on the Board at the Football League.

‘I better be careful what I say because the chairman is on the Football League board! Whether he is one who is for it or against it I don’t know but from a personal point of view I don’t think it is applicable to football matches at this level.’

‘You work so hard away from home to get a point at least and to lose it on a penalty shoot out would be a farce really. Teams will be shutting up shop with 20 minutes to go and bringing on all the penalty takers. Everyone would be rushing to sign specialist penalty takers, so from my point of view it is a poor idea and whether it gets through or not. If it does get put through, we have to deal with it but like a few other manager’s I am not interested it in it at all.’

Larry’s point regarding earning a point away from home and possibly losing that opportunity should these new rules be implemented is one that makes complete sense in my honest opinion.

After a hard-fought 90minutes against tough competition, battling back from 3-0 down to 3-3, then seeing that hard work thrown down the pan because the opposition goalkeeper guessed the direction of the deciding penalty kick, is something the FL really need to take a good hard look at.

Although talks are only at a ‘preliminary’ stage, managers across the country have spoken out against it. Fingers crossed that the meeting – taking place today in Wrexham – means that the whole escapade is put to bed once and for all.

Whoever comes up with these ridiculous ideas really needs to get their priorities straight in my opinion. There are far more important issues in football at the moment that need to be ironed out – for instance diving and cheating need to be clamped down on – no matter what anyone says regarding these things, nothing has changed to rid the game of cheats and it sickens me that some still dive – see Arjen Robben vs Spurs in the FA Cup for a very recent example of this.

While on the subject of wacky ideas for football, it wouldn’t surprise me if Sepp Blatter – the supreme being that he is – gave his ideas to the producers of the Budweiser football television adverts.

In fact, I’ll give it 2 years before ‘Extra-time Multi-Ball’ is introduced on a trial basis in the lower leagues…