The new season’s schedule – an unnecessary evil?

We all knew that this season was going to be, to put it lightly, condensed. The nature of the beast means that with UEFA Euro 2021 coming up next summer, the domestic leagues need to shut up shop across Europe in the name of preparing players and managers for the second-biggest international tournament in world football.

You’d think that there would be quite a few sacrifices made because of that, but today, we’re going to throw a few questions out there regarding competitions that probably need to trim the fat away ever so slightly this season.

Carabao Cup

While we may no longer be getting two-legged semi-finals for the Carabao Cup during the current campaign, we have to question why the competition is even happening in the first place. A large portion of clubs don’t take it seriously, and without fans being present, the financial advantage of it for smaller clubs has lessened. Even in a standard season many teams don’t enjoy the Carabao Cup, and it should’ve been viewed as expendable.

FA Cup Replays

FA Cup replays have seemingly been scrapped for the 2020/21 season and that is, in itself, an absolutely huge step in the right direction. Our only issue is that we can see a scenario in which they keep putting replays to one side even after this season is over, and at that stage, it’ll probably start to have a real financial impact on clubs lower down the pyramid. Still, we can’t imagine that’ll be the priority of The FA.

International Breaks

We understand that they need to figure out who will qualify for the Euros and that they need to keep the ball rolling with qualification for the FIFA World Cup, but the UEFA Nations League still feels like a polite and complicated way of saying ‘international friendlies’. The fact that we’re going to have an international break so soon into the new campaign is, in pretty much every respect, insane.

Community Shield

This one isn’t too big of an issue, but we don’t really think there’s any need for a glorified friendly like the Community Shield without any fans – especially given how little time both Liverpool and Arsenal have been given between last season and this one. Maybe it’ll turn into an absolute classic and shock us all, but most supporters are probably more than happy to wait two more weeks until the Premier League gets back underway.