Walsall Football Club

One of the biggest issues cited by the EFL is that there are insufficient dates available in each season to sensibly accommodate both League and Cup fixtures without clashes. To make any changes feasible they would have to work both practically and financially for Clubs and would mean creating the maximum number of weekend and Bank Holiday League fixtures. In practice this would mean that the season may need to start a week earlier for the Premier League and that up to two rounds of the FA Cup (probably rounds 4 & 5) would need to move to a midweek slot. If this was achieved, a winter break could be added to the schedule, finishing the EFL Season with the traditional play-off final Bank Holiday weekend. 

However, in order to achieve the above (and this is the crux of the matter), the EFL would need to reduce the number of League games played to free up the midweek dates required to move the FA Cups Rounds into these slots. In practice this would mean the creation of four divisions in the EFL of either 20 or 22 teams – The Championship, League One, League Two and a newly formed League Three. 

It is the EFL’s belief that the creation of extra weekend dates for Premier League games will generate sufficient additional revenue from their Broadcast partners to redistribute to EFL clubs to fund the losses that a reduced number of games would have, as well as any loss to the FA, after they have determined the ‘value’ of the winter break for national team preparation. 

This is clearly a very controversial proposal and one that we as a Club are extremely sceptical of. We are yet to be convinced that the proposals can be practically achieved and financially underwritten but more importantly that they are desirable in the first place.