Should Premier League teams stop playing in the Carling Cup?
Every year, the Premier League plays on when major leagues across Europe pack it in for a winter break. We’ve talked about the need (or lack thereof) of a winter break in the Premier League before, with medical opinion supporting the case for a short break in December and January. There are two arguments raised against the winter break – one, the players are already paid so much so they have no right to complain (can the underpaid players go on strike then?) and two, there are just too many games to fit into an already tight schedule for a winter break to be feasible. While the wages debate is a separate issue (and the case of “high wages = must play all year long” is thrown in everywhere whether relevant or not), a legitimate case can be made for reducing the number of matches teams play over the course of a season. There are several ways we can do that (reducing teams, scraping the Carling Cup altogether), but scraping replays and pulling Premier League teams out of the Carling Cup a
