It's not just about Liverpool and this is something that a lot of people will ignore but Klopp's been talking about this for 4 years now, bringing it up when City had a crazy January/February period last year and when Newcastle picked up 4 injuries in 1 game a few weeks back. It would be easy for Klopp to do or say nothing. As I said before, there's players in our squad that could do with a game and the game could easily be scheduled for the Tuesday and he could then send everybody away for a break on Tuesday night instead of after our League game on Saturday. It wouldn't be ideal but it's not a massive issue either but I suspect Klopp sees it as an ideal opportunity to prove a much bigger point.
Every International tournament we seem to go into with major injury issues and or bemoan our lack of a winter break when we don't do well. The PL have tried to create a break this season but it's nothing more than a bodge job. We simply play too many games in too short a time. The issues regarding players fitness and welfare have always been there but this season things have come to a head because not only hasn't it been great for players fitness but Liverpool have proven that if a team is successful then it becomes physically impossible to fit all these games in. The FA and Football League should be thankful that we took the decision to play our kids vs Villa because had we played them on the proposed alternate date (with a stronger side and won) then we'd now be scheduled to play 3 games in our winter break, 2 of which would have been scheduled on the same midweek.
The amount of games PL sides, particularly those in Europe, are meant to play and the scheduling is fundamentally flawed. Liverpool this season have proven that and changes need to be made. If people don't want to scrap FA Cup replays then scrap the League Cup or at least scrap it for sides who are in Europe. We're the only major European country that has a 2nd domestic cup anymore and if that was no longer around then you could bring the FA Cup games forward, creating more room in the calendar so that teams can have a proper winter break rather than the bodge job that we've got now.
