Well, well, as usual the FA cooks up a storm from nothing. Wednesday its Aston Villa against Blackpool, just another midweek fixture, but what’s different about this one is the line up that Blackpool have put forward. All eleven players who played on the weekend in their draw against Everton were dropped and six players were making their first Premier League starts.
Now we can see from the line ups the mass changed made by manager Ian Holloway, this was done with the six pointer with relegation rivals West Ham this weekend in mind, although Holloway hasn’t publicly said this.
Vs Everton 21 Gilks 3 Crainey 5 Eardley 6 Evatt 20 Cathcart 4 Southern 11 Vaughan 26 Adam 12 Taylor-Fletcher 16 Varney 39 Campbell | Vs Aston Villa 28 Kingson 17 Basham 24 Edwards 31 Keinan 04 Southern 19 Sylvestre 23 Phillips 29 Carney 09 Harewood 10 Ormerod 18 Euell |
Now we can all see that on the two team sheets the names are very different but who's to say which is the stronger team? Last season Wolves and Mick McCarthy were found guilty of breaching rules B.13 and E.20. B.13 relates to each PL club behaving “towards each other Club and the League with the utmost good faith.” Rule E.20 stipulates that “in every League Match each participating Club shall field a full strength team.” These are the same rules that suits at the FA may feel that Blackpool have breached.
My counter argument to this is that Ian Holloway the manager of Blackpool has to look at the bigger picture to secure the future of his club. So by rotating his squad he is ensuring that when playing West Ham in their next game his team is in a good position to win. If Blackpool's results are negative it is Holloway who has to answer to the clubs hierarchy, he was employed to make the decisions regarding the football side of things. He spends his days training the squad watching the players and is the best position to decide who plays and who doesn't. This includes choosing players based on intangible factors like fatigue/fitness, attitude and performance in training all reasons which can't be measured or seen by the FA but players can be dropped for. Whats the point of having a 25 man squad?
When does go from being the strongest team to breaking these rules? Rafa Benitez during his time at Liverpool and Sir Alex Ferguson have both chopped and changed to ensure their star players were fit to play in the big games. Neither of them were fined for playing weakened line ups. This I feel is due to the subjective nature of the rules. The weakened line ups of both Manchester United and Liverpool would have several full internationals whilst Wolves and Blackpool don't have that kind of strength and depth.
A few seasons ago both United and Liverpool fielded weakened teams against West Ham and Fulham respectively and the results of those games had a major impact on Sheffield United who got relegated. No charges were put forward against either sides.
The difference I think between the Wolves situation and the Blackpool one is that Wolves manager Mick McCarthy admitted openly that they played a weakened team. If you look into what was said by Holloway after being asked to explain his starting line up, he never said it was a weakened team and said the decision was based on the fitness of the squad. Because of this Wolves were fined and it looks like Blackpool may not be fined. Can the FA punish one team and not another if they do the same thing but put a different spin on it?
I feel that this rule of playing the strongest team is a difficult one to enforce and justify. It doesn't take the whole season into consideration like a top manager would need to when making decision for his team. A manager has enough problems throughout the season without adding the worry of how their results will affect other teams.
