NO STOMACH FOR THE WHOLE GAME SOLUTION

Printed in the FA Trophy 3rd Qualifying round game v Wingate and Finchley on Saturday 26th November 2006. We lost 4-2 in front of 353.

It hasn't been a good week for the English Football League (EFL) chief executive Shaun Harvey. Sounding like a Nazi diktat his 'Whole Game Solution' which promised to 'seize the initiative' finally bit the dust after months of controversy.

The 'Solution' would tackle fixture congestion by cutting the number of clubs in each league, create another league by taking eight clubs from the National League (Conference in old money), move the later rounds of the FA Cup to mid-week and – hey presto, we could have a winter break and the England team would become invincible.

Mixed up in all this was the emergence of the Checkatrade Trophy so that the Premier League academy teams youngsters could pit their wits against lower league opposition. Many saw this as the thin edge of the wedge for getting Premier League B teams in the lower divisions. However, its been an unmitigated disaster with mass boycotts and some clubs recording their lowest ever competitive crowds – while most of the top teams decided not to enter their academy sides! Last week 12 league teams were handed financial penalties for fielding weakened teams. Hang on, so top teams playing youngsters good – lower league teams giving their youngsters match experience bad. A tournament that was revamped to help develop youth, fines its owns clubs £62k for playing youth. Way to go Harvey!

After being given a £3,000 fine, Bristol Rovers boss Darrell Clarke fumed: "I've just been trying to get hold of the EFL on the phone to try and find out if they want to pick my team for Saturday. When somebody sat behind a desk with a nice warn cup of coffee can start telling me which first-team players I can and can't play then the game is gone. I wonder if the people who have thought up a ridiculous format that supporters up and down the country have boycotted will think about giving themselves a fine. That's a good question isn't it?”

However it was the plans to move the FA Cup to mid-week that scuppered the Whole Game Solution, with the EFL complaining that the FA’s unwillingness to consider moving FA Cup matches to midweek in rounds four and five to free up more weekends had made the plan unworkable. The fact that the FA recently announced a new six year overseas deal for the FA Cup that guarantees £800 million over that period and which the chief executive, Martin Glenn, said would be “transformative” to the organisation’s finances. As a condition of the deal it promised to keep FA Cup matches on weekends, but remains open to further negotiation over replays.

Tom Reed from Stand Fanzine put it so well why many lower league supporters cant stomach the 'Solution' “They can’t stand your seemingly incessant brown-nosing of the Premier League. They don’t want Premier League B-teams in a Football League competition, given the problems that a dominant Premier League appears to be causing throughout football and are horrified you suggested it. They think your new EFL Trophy is bloody stupid with those B-teams, crackpot regionalisation, average opponents and baffling rules. They can’t accept a ‘Whole Game Solution’ which doesn’t involve large scale reform of the Premier League in line with what is expected of the Football League. They don’t want to hear any more about developing the England side when Premier League clubs can take the best Football League youth talent from poorer clubs for a capped fee under the Elite Player Performance Plan, hoard them and not play them.”

The Football League considering everything, is phenomenally successful. It’s top division, despite being a second tier division, is one of the top five or six watched in the whole of Europe. Of course the EFL need to do something about some of the Muppets who run these clubs head on– just ask Charlton, Blackpool, Leeds and Coventry supporters for some advice. But if the desire is to help out the England national team, then that will need root and branch reform of our coaching systems and tackling the staggering power the Premier League welds including stockpiling the best youngsters without them having a cat in hells chance of playing – but that's never going to happen. Instead they try and mess with the lower leagues. A decision that has come crashing down spectacularly around their heads.