Recently the FA announced a rather major change to the format of the FA Cup by completely scrapping replays from the First Round onwards and, whilst this certainly won’t affect Sunderland in any major capacity, it definitely will have a profound negative effect on many of the teams below us in League One and Two and non-league clubs. Because of this, I believe a boycott from clubs in the EFL (non-league clubs still need the revenue) is needed for next year’s competition.
We need to send a message to the Premier League and Football Association that both denying lower league clubs a major source of revenue in the form of replays and making changes to one of the best things about English football without consulting the 700+ teams who play in the competition on a yearly basis who aren’t in the top flight is completely unacceptable.
By deciding how a competition which is primarily made up of teams outside of the top flight without also receiving input from those clubs is yet another example of football moving away from its traditional roots and more evidence that the FA is now merely a puppet to the Premier League and broadcasters. FA Cup games being broadcast on non free to air channels from 2025-26 was the first warning sign that the people running football in this country simply do not care about the sport itself but rather how they can benefit themselves through lucrative deals. The arguments for scrapping replays are ridiculously lazy to the point where you have to think they are almost trying to mock teams who aren’t in the Premier League.
Fixture congestion doesn’t make any sense as an argument because EFL clubs will often play far more games than their Premier League counterparts. They could play in three different cup competitions and also feature in the playoffs. Compare this to a Premier League side who isn't in a European competition, and they’ve got only two cup competitions and a lesser amount of league fixtures to worry about. Besides, even if Premier League clubs tended to play more games than their lower league counterparts, they have access to far far more resources than them and should be able to deal with a greater amount of fixture congestion. Look at Truro City or Gateshead’s fixture schedule in the last few game weeks and I’ve not heard a single complaint from either of their managers - unlike Jurgen Klopp who thinks he’s entitled to moan about an entirely normal schedule for a season.
I didn’t see any of these Premier League clubs complaining about FIFA expanding the Club World Cup, or Champions/Europa League (and the reason for that is no doubt monetary) so why is potentially having to play a couple of extra games in the FA Cup such a big inconvenience? When the likes of Shrewsbury managed to take Liverpool to a replay it was a huge moment for them and a fantastic achievement; go back further and would Sunderland, a Second Division side, have been able to win the FA Cup in 1973 without replays? The big actors want to strip football of what makes it great, stories of teams defying the odds to challenge bigger clubs, to benefit coddled Premier League stars and whiny managers who don’t actually understand why regular people love the game.
A boycott of EFL clubs would be a huge statement and actually show the Premier League that they aren’t the only power in English football who gets to have a say. The EFL existed long before the Premier League and the FA Cup longer before the EFL so how is right that only the 20 clubs who happen to make up the top flight in this exact moment in time get to have a say?
For some clubs like Sunderland scrapping replays is probably actually a benefit. But that is why it is vital the bigger clubs in the Championship - Leeds, Ipswich, Leicester, West Brom etc - need to show solidarity with their fellow lower league clubs and get behind a boycott to demonstrate that football shouldn’t be about selfishness and doing what only benefits your club.
Without replays we wouldn’t have seen Crawley Town get to the Fifth Round in 2010/11 as a non-league side nor Sutton doing the same in 2016/17. Those were major achievements and remember how talked about that Marine vs Tottenham game was?
The FA doing this is a major dereliction of duty to run the game for the benefit of all clubs no matter how small and if the clubs outside of the Premier League don’t do everything in their power to make them rethink their decision it’s only going to get worse. Eventually I fear the FA Cup and certainly the League Cup may cease to exist as the tournaments we are all familiar with (if that hasn’t already happened). I’m not sure if a boycott would work but we have to try something otherwise the rich will simply continue to mutilate our game that existed long before they got involved. Perhaps hyperbolic, but I think this genuinely could lead to the death of non-league football clubs and deny non-league clubs the ability financially to gain promotion to the Football League. That should be reason enough to no longer allow those running the game to run it into the ground like a series of ungenerous oligarchs.
