Holloway in trouble for too many team changes

whats the point in a 25 man squad, if you cant play all 25 players?

why not just have an 18 man squad and you can only name upto 5 changes each match, if you want to go down the pedantic FA route?

This is a stupid rule, but I guess it's once again tied into the fact that it's the Premier League. People pay to watch a first team and they want one. When they've given that much money to the clubs they seem to have made their own rules.
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what about city, they could easily field 2x teams that are better than wolves first team. should we ban wolves from the league as their standards arent good enough? or should we penalise city for using the squad they registered with the FA if they chose to make big changes?

IF they went past the 25 man squad and started putting absolute youth, or reserves into their team, i could understand the penalties from the FA. but i agree 100%, you have a 25 man team, not just 11 players and a lot of handicapped folk. you should be able to use your squad as you see fit.
 
Nickg said:
you should be able to use your squad as you see fit.
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I agree, if intentions are honourable, but managers are potentially using this as a way of maximising their chance of winning a more important upcoming game (to their club) that could be against a/ a relegation candidate like themselves or b/ a title winning candidate.

Iirc, Mick McCarthy even said as much last time, and I understand exactly where he is coming from, but the fact remains that it makes the league less competitive than it simply has to be.
 
but the personell is only half the battle isnt it.

can we stop managers from playing 460 pls as its generating too many draws at home vs opposition who would other wise have won.

or can we stop someone going 424 if they so wished at man utd and get lumped by some cricket score line...

where does it end? like i say, hwy allow 25 players if you dont think that those 25 are good enough to play? considering tactics, motivation etc can be a large contributor to the actual outcome then unless the FA wants to try and control each club, their selection, tactics, substititons etc then just butt out.
 
shoot1st said:
I agree, if intentions are honourable, but managers are potentially using this as a way of maximising their chance of winning a more important upcoming game (to their club) that could be against a/ a relegation candidate like themselves or b/ a title winning candidate.

Iirc, Mick McCarthy even said as much last time, and I understand exactly where he is coming from, but the fact remains that it makes the league less competitive than it simply has to be.
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Yeah but where do you draw the line? Let's say man united dropped Rooney in a game against say Wigan as they were playing Chelsea 3 days later? Are they maximising their chances? Should they be punished? What if they rested Rooney and Vds? Rooney, Vds and vidic? and so on and so forth. What if united won that game with rested players, should they still be punished? They have afterall increased the possibility of them not winning the game even if they managed to win.

Given every player being fit I could name you a united first 11 and then name you a second 11 that no one would bat an eyelid at.

Every club names a squad of 25 players if Blackpool are punished for this it will purely be because of them not having 'big name' players an will be an injustice.
 
Yeah this is the point exactly, where do you draw the line? Personally I can't see anywhere where you could and it be fair for everyone, which is why I don't think this will go away any time soon.

I don't know what they're going to do, but one things for sure, as they fined McCarthy last year they have to fine Holloway this year.

Maybe they will just leave everything as is and see what happens, but I seriously think the league would suffer as a result. It's only small (no insult intentioned) clubs at the minute but what if a club does it near the end of the season and the result directly effects who wins the league? Imo, they need to nip it in the bud to stop that from happening as that would be a complete disaster for footy in this country.
 
Wonder if they would have fined sir Alex if he'd of made 9/10 changes for a game. I seem to remember him doing something at the end of a couple of seasons ago.
 
shoot1st said:
Yeah this is the point exactly, where do you draw the line? Personally I can't see anywhere where you could and it be fair for everyone, which is why I don't think this will go away any time soon.

I don't know what they're going to do, but one things for sure, as they fined McCarthy last year they have to fine Holloway this year.

Maybe they will just leave everything as is and see what happens, but I seriously think the league would suffer as a result. It's only small (no insult intentioned) clubs at the minute but what if a club does it near the end of the season and the result directly effects who wins the league? Imo, they need to nip it in the bud to stop that from happening as that would be a complete disaster for footy in this country.
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I bet there has been an instance in the history of the league in which a 'big' club has directly influenced who was relegated by fielding a weakened side against one of their rivals and slipping to a shock defeat/draw at some point in the season.

Iirc there is a difference between McCarthy and Holloway in that I believe McCarthy went on record saying he'd fielded a weakened team with an eye on the next game?

I don't believe Holloway has made a direct admission.
 
DanH84 said:
I bet there has been an instance in the history of the league in which a 'big' club has directly influenced who was relegated by fielding a weakened side against one of their rivals and slipping to a shock defeat/draw at some point in the season.

Iirc there is a difference between McCarthy and Holloway in that I believe McCarthy went on record saying he'd fielded a weakened team with an eye on the next game?

I don't believe Holloway has made a direct admission.
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I'm sure that once this has a direct affect on a big club we'll soon find out if there's any history to it ;)

McCarthy certainly opened a huge can of worms when he said what he did. It was the first time I'd really considered that a manager would do such a thing. But then once it was highlighted specifically by the FA fining him for it, I think it just made a few people stop and think that what if it escalated and more managers started to take the same approach.

If Holloway doesn't get fined it'll probably be due to the fact that he hasn't directly admitted it, but the issue is still going to come up again, it's just a matter of time.
 
DanH84 said:
I bet there has been an instance in the history of the league in which a 'big' club has directly influenced who was relegated by fielding a weakened side against one of their rivals and slipping to a shock defeat/draw at some point in the season.
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Liverpool did it against Fulham in 2007 and lost, in the process directly helping Fulham stay up.
 
shoot1st said:
The way the FA/League are looking at it is that no one team is bigger than the league itself, i.e. why should the league suffer as a result of one manager putting his club first when in doing so comes at the expense of the league itself.

The league will continue in fine form should Blackpool be relegated but I doubt it'd continue for very long if more managers started picking and chosing which games they fancied a win from.

The league has got to be 100% competitive in every single game or else the league is flawed as the results of matches are being decided before a ball is even kicked.

The FA have to do something to stop if for the good of the game so I expect Holloway to be heavily fined and the fines will continue until they can think of a way to keep everyone happy but yet still keep the league 100% competitive. Like I say, I can't think of a way to resolve it, so I think this is just going to go on and on.
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Agreed.

I think it's weird that we don't have those rules for knock out competitions. Ok the scope is smaller - but take the group stages of the Champion's League for example. An already qualified team at the top might inadvertently determine who gets the third placed Europa League spot, affecting therefore two other sides.
 
Tummy said:
Wonder if they would have fined sir Alex if he'd of made 9/10 changes for a game. I seem to remember him doing something at the end of a couple of seasons ago.
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Wasn't that the last game of the season vs Hull iirc, where they won anyway? If we'd have lost it would have been interesting...
 
Greenlizard0 said:
Agreed.

I think it's weird that we don't have those rules for knock out competitions. Ok the scope is smaller - but take the group stages of the Champion's League for example. An already qualified team at the top might inadvertently determine who gets the third placed Europa League spot, affecting therefore two other sides.
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then they should say 'you have a fixed first team and you can only swap anyone in cases of injury.' Perhaps those injuries should also be assessed by an independent medical professional to ensure they are genuine.

Because surely it can't be fair for the big clubs to rotate a few players in and out while denying that opportunity to the relative minnows.


United - West Ham is another one where a weakened team lost to a club fighting relegation and had a direct influence.
 
If Chelsea fielded this team:

Hilario

Bosingwa - Aanholt - Bruma - Ferreira

Zhirkov - Ramires - Benayoun - Kakuta

Sturridge - Borini
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Would anyone truly bat an eyelid? I've left out every regular starter if everyone was fit.

You could do similar for every team towards the top of the league. There's no way to stop it, where do you draw the line?

This kind of thing has always gone on, has it been to the detriment of the game before?


DanH84 said:
United - West Ham is another one where a weakened team lost to a club fighting relegation and had a direct influence.
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That's the one I was thinking of.
 
PIG
Brown - Evans - Smalling - O'Shea
Park - Anderson - Fletcher - Giggs
Hernandez - Owen


This is making an assumption that everyone is fit (and Hargreaves hasn't got crap) and Giggs is no longer first choice on left wing (oh and we play 4-4-2) I've left Neville out of both teams thinking most people would rather Smalling played than shift Wes or Nev to the centre. I've also left a few players out who's quality is debatable perhaps but have certainly featured for our first team on a fair few occasions.

VDS
Rafael - Vidic - Rio - Evra
Valencia -Scholes - Harg - Nani
Rooney - Berbatov

So two completely separate teams that I think United could quite easily field without any objections from the PL (you can debate about the lack of quality if you like but that's not really the point). Gilly has shown that Chelsea could do it as well and i'm sure there are a few others out there. Yet Blackpool do it, lose to a last minute goal and the PL see fit to investigate.
 
FA/PL made a boo boo, remember when Fulham put out a crap team and Sheff United/Palace went down when you start handing out fines, this becomes the norm and people don't forget, so you either fine/punish teams or its another case of those in charge not having a clue.
 
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Gilly said:
This kind of thing has always gone on, has it been to the detriment of the game before?
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I don't remember a case other than those that have happened over the last few seasons. Plus, I'd imagine that if there were earlier cases the media would have dug them up by now.

cheets64 said:
FA/PL made a boo boo
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They did that - they just didn't think it through and I can't wait to see what they're going to do this time.
 
Ridiculous, his team didn't exactly roll over at the hands of Villa and probably justified a point out the game which they were unfortunate not to get. Who is to tell this man he picked a 'weaker' team?

Aboslutely barmy, especially as big teams do it so frequently. Couple of seasons ago Man U pretty much played their youth team against Hull, they even fielded Lee ******* Martin who was on loan at Forest that season and was nothing short of useless.
 
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