The re-named,
re-launched Football League Trophy (for the time-being called the
Checkatrade Trophy) kicked off this week with the Sky Blues
entertaining West Ham's Under 23 team and emerging with a 4-2
victory. I am not in favour of the 'pilot' re-structuring which sees
a number of Premiership & Championship club's Under 23 teams
participating in the new group stages. Fans around the country turned
their backs on the competition this week with the vast majority of
attendances for the first round of matches under 1,000 and some as
low as 400. There were 2,091 at the Ricoh – an attendance only
topped at Bramall Lane – and the pitiful crowds may convince the
Football League that they have made a mistake. Billed as
‘innovation’, a phrase that is not always a good thing, first
impressions are that this is a half baked solution to a problem that
never existed in the first place and one that pleases no one,
especially the fans.
It's still not clear to
fans why the FL made these radical changes and it does not bode well
for next summer when the 72 League clubs vote on a major
restructuring of the League to expand the current three divisions of
24 clubs to four divisions of 20. Coventry City have always been
known as innovators, especially under Jimmy Hill and Derrick Robins,
but the latest changes and the proposals on the table next summer
would surely have those two giants from the club's history turning in
their graves.
There are still however
some benefits of the re-jigged competition, primarily a Wembley
final. Try telling the 40,000 Oxford United fans who followed their
team to Wembley for last year's final that the competition is a waste
of time. And, if the Sky Blues happen to get a whiff of Wembley in
their nostrils, the fans will turn out in hordes, as they did in 2013
when over 31,000 watched the Crewe game.
Many people have asked
me this week how Tuesday night's crowd ranks in the club's all-time
low crowds. Putting aside the attendances at Sixfields (there were 12
crowds below 2,000 there with the lowest 1,214 v Hartlepool in the FA
Cup) the lowest in the club's time in the Football League (post-1919)
for senior games are as follows:
1,086 v Millwall (Full
Members Cup) 1985-86
2,059 v Crystal Palace
(Division Three South) 1927-28
2,091 v West Ham Under
23s (Football League Trophy) 2016-17
3,781 v Wimbledon (Full
Members Cup) 1989-90
3,974 v Newport County
(Division Three South) 1954-55
4,744 v Hartlepools
(Division Three North) 1925-26
4,785 v QPR (Division
Three South) 1953-54
4,976 v Portsmouth
(League Cup) 2016-17
I'm pretty sure the
next game in the competition (at home to Northampton on 4th
October) will generate a larger crowd than Tuesday's, and with one
win under their belts there is a good opportunity to progress in the
trophy.
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