I don’t know about you, but I can wait for tomorrow night’s Checkatrade cup match at Fratton Park where Portsmouth will “entertain” Bristol Rovers. I can wait because, quite frankly, I couldn’t care less about it.
The Checkatrade, AKA the Paint Pot Trophy, is the knock out competition, you may recall, for clubs of the two lower Football League divisions, the aim of which is to make a few bob for the clubs concerned and to give the two sides that make the final a day out at Wembley. What could possibly be wrong with that? Well, when the league invites Under 21 teams from the top two divisions to take part for entirely spurious reasons and reduces the tournament to irrelevance, that’s what’s wrong with that.
Portsmouth manager Paul Cook has the right idea, he could not care less about this bastardised cup. He changed his entire team for the last game and admitted that he may do the same tomorrow when Rovers visit. He knows his team might lose and for him, that’s just too bad. Hear, hear.
Rovers have a different, you might call it, more professional attitude and assistant manager Marcus Stewart told the Bristol Post that, “I’m not sure what sort of side that Portsmouth will put out, but we will be putting one out to win the game regardless. We’ve got to win the game and we’ll see what the maths throw up after Yeovil and Reading have played their final group game on Wednesday night.” I am well beyond the days when I used to quarrel about every decision made by the board and management at the Gas, not least because we now have an owner, a board and management team I admire and respect, but I struggle with the club stance on this wretched trophy, even though I know where they are coming from.
Short of actually throwing the game, I’d much rather Rovers were out of the tournament altogether, although it is hard to actually want them to lose. And there’s another thing: Rovers are on a very good run which is down to a lot of things and confidence and belief are two crucial factors. Losing one game, even in such a Mickey Mouse trophy, might, just might, cause a dip in that confidence, the last thing Stewart and manager Darrell Clarke would want to happen. So it’s hard.
Maybe Clarke could mix things up a bit, including fringe and squad players who might not otherwise get a game. Experiment with different ideas, formations, tactics. Players will always want to win, but maybe giving players much needed match time will actually benefit the squad, win or lose.
We certainly need to keep the pressure up on the EFL to ensure they never repeat this idiotic experiment with Under 21 teams. Even if we got through to the next round, even if we won it, we’ll have won something so utterly worthless and meaningless, it scarcely matters.
Rovers are losing money by renaming in this competition. Even if money is no longer a problem at BS7, I still don’t see the point of wasting it.
