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- 18 Jun 2019
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Yet further negative impact of the paintpot trophy by my reckoning...
This season (don't recall it previously being the case) they appear to have spread out the 'matchdays' across multiple midweeks. So whereas us and Reading (and everyone else) could have played all our paintpots on the same days, they are now staggered - further limiting the mutual available midweeks for postponed League games.
It's already happened with our trip to Lincoln. 3 of the other L1 fixtures postponed that day (September 9th) were played the following Tuesday (19th) because none of those 6 clubs had paintpots. We did, Lincoln did - so we fall behind. We could have even played Lincoln tonight had they not have a paintpot game.
Other than this time last week (when there were proper scheduled League fixtures), there's been paintpot trophy games every Tuesday since August 22nd.
Why oh why can't paintpot games all happen on the same midweek? Get it done for everyone. 3 midweeks and the group is done. Instead, by my reckoning, they're doing it over 12 (twelve) midweeks - up to and including the 21st November.
At this point it's like someone at Football League HQ is deliberately trying to cause maximum distruption for a f**king laugh.
It's the clubs who ultimately agree the trophy group stage game dates. They're given a deadline by which they have to be played and a suggested week.
Looking at it, for whatever reason, we scheduled our 2nd/3rd group fixtures, well before the suggested week. So we are actually ahead of most of the other EFL clubs in terms of group games played.
MK was played on 19th September, with the suggested week from the EFL being this weke.
Chelsea U21s is set to be played on 7th Nov, with the suggested week being w/c 13th November.
I don't understand why they can't enforce ALL games have to be played in the same week. (though i do recall something about it being difficult to fit in with the U21 club diaries - the irony!!!)