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A cup run might not result in relegation, but fixture congestion and possible injuries to key players might drop you three or four positions down the table. Ultimately that could cost a club £9-12m for a competition they know they're unlikely to win once they get drawn against one of the big boys.
And when you compare this to the FA Cup prize money per round, the winner gets £2m which is less than they would lose if a cup run only cost them one league position in the end:
17 league appearances for us out of a career total 33.
So in plain English he hasn't played very much senior football. Certainly less than a player his age ought to have.
I don't know if that was his decision or the Premier League clubs that are supposed to be developing our young players, but if they insist on hoovering up all the best prospects they should be doing a better job with their career progression.
Sorry to be a pain but for that to be a fair comparison you would also need to take into account the previous fixtures of all those opponents.
Had they also just played a cup tie or were they well rested?
Had they won or lost in the cup?
Did they field strong teams or rest players?
It isn't all just about us.
Also, I think we're drifting off the point of numptydumpty's original question which I read as:
- will shipping six goals affect our long term morale?
It's a fair question and we have seen this in the past.
In 2001 a very strong Arsenal put six past us and it did appear to drain the morale of the group (to use the modern jargon).
But circumstances were different back then. We were struggling in the league and (as always) we were skint and there wasn't much scope to do anything about it. We had also been in and around the relegation scrap the previous three seasons. And perhaps most importantly the fans weren't too happy about things back then. Luckily we didn't have social media back then or there would have been a lot more negativity about the place.
I don't see any problems with team spirit this season and I don't see much despondency in the fans (albeit there is legitimate anger with the team selection at Leicester).
So I don't think we will fall away because of one heavy beating.
But the next two games are both long away trips with not much rest in between. And we might lose both games. Plymouth is always a tough place to go, and Hull away three days later is crazy fixture planning.
Even if we do lose the next two games it doesn't mean our season is falling apart because of the Leicester result.
But the club has backed itself into this corner when they didn't have to. We're midtable and on a good run of form. Clive has made this point many times before, if we aren't going to have a decent go at the cup from that position then when will we ever?
I get that you're angry, and kudos to you for going to the game.
And you're right, if we play them in the league next season we will be fielding a better team than this.
But on a different point, if this had been a league game would it even have been played in that fog? I think at least one of the managers would have been throwing their toys out of the pram and demanding it be called off. Which to me suggests that aside from a small number of clubs with very strong squads the cups are becoming a distraction that most clubs at our level would happily do without. Which is a sad state of affairs.
You can't say that this is a similar Leicester side to last season and then say they're shit.
Leicester won the league last season with 97 points and 89 goals. For a long time people were talking about them getting 100 points and 100 goals. And by rights they probably should have done.
By comparison we finished with 56 points and 47 goals. Not much more than half what Leicester achieved on both counts.
Yes they have been on a losing streak, but that included games against Liverpool, Manchester City, Newcastle, Villa, and Wolves. Better sides than Leicester wouldn't get too much from that run of games.
They might be shit by Premier League standards but that doesn't make them easy pickings for us.
For what it's worth I was disappointed we didn't go with a stronger team. But even their own fans didn't expect them to go with a side as strong as they did. And even with our strongest team we would have been looking at penalties as our best shot of getting through.
My starting point would be to ask what sort of average time was Eddie Izzard running? Probably nowhere near the sort of pace a professional athlete would have set!
You probably also need a particular sort of obsessive mindset to tackle a challenge like that.
As for the weight. It might seem counter intuitive but carrying extra pounds can help with endurance activities, and the lack of body fat can affect the stamina levels of professional athletes.
When Frank Bruno was in his prime he didn't have an ounce of fat on him, but if he didn't put his opponents away early he tended to run out of steam and rarely lasted the distance.
At the other extreme. When David Walliams swam the English Channel in 2006 it was widely reported that he achieved one of the top fifty times ever recorded:
From this we might conclude that David Walliams and Eddie Izzard were in better shape than Frank Bruno!? Hmm, maybe not.
Medicine and sports science is a growing business, for those who can afford it. I read an article recently about Barcelona being a global leader in sports medicine and was selling its knowledge to the health sector and other sports clubs around the world. Can't find that article now but there is an old ESPN piece on Barcelona and its investment in sports medicine:
At least no one has tried to pin it on poor training and medical/rehab facilities!
We certainly don't have that excuse anymore. Not with a state of the art training ground.
But it does add to the frustration with players being unavailable to soft tissue injuries, which current sports/medical science experts seem to think are avoidable.
Maybe the science isn't as good as the experts tell us it is, or maybe we are doing it wrong.
But having spent many years and a lot of money to build this new facility the club should be looking hard at why we are still losing players to "avoidable" injuries. And from a PR point of view it wouldn't hurt to be a bit more open with the fans at some point (perhaps not until the end of the season - don't want to lose that competitive advantage!) as to why they think we're still struggling with these injuries.
I think it was Sepp Blatter who wanted the football calendar to be synchronised globally so that all domestic tournaments around the world were played at the same time of year. That way clubs could concentrate on their domestic programs without interruption. Then there would be time set aside at the end of the season to concentrate on international fixtures/tournaments.
Problem is that our winter is someone else's summer, and vice versa. You would end up with games being played in extreme weather conditions.
Another idea that works better on paper than in practice,
You could increase squad sizes for EFL clubs, but that just increases costs and gives more scope for parachute clubs to hoard the better players.
You could also change the rules for international breaks so that all EFL fixtures go ahead, regardless of the number of call-ups. It would allow fixtures to be more evenly spread and reduce the number of three-game weeks. But there would be opposition from clubs and international bodies.
I quite like the idea of regional leagues for the reasons you explained. But would the clubs agree to it? That's the real sticking point.
Also, teams coming up from the Conference aren't restricted by the sort of P&S rules we have to deal with. Open the doors for a load of them to come in and they will be starting with stronger squads and better finances than the rest. You'll just get more millionaire vanity projects like Salford and Wrexham.
And again, you haven't thought through the impact on L1. Eight teams would need to move down. That's a third of the division. How many of them would really want that?
Like I said, I agree with the principle of your suggestion.
But you haven't thought through the logistics.
Two up and four down over two years would only work between the Championship and L1 because four teams would need to move down.
But eight teams would need to drop down from L1 to L2, and twelve teams would need to drop down from L2. You can't move that many teams in two years without creating a lot of chaos and a lot of resentment.
It's not impossible that a team could drop from the Championship to L2 in two seasons without ever finishing in the bottom three. How would QPR fans feel if it happened to us?
The PL teams wouldn't agree to finance it. Why would they? They seem to resent every penny they send our way as it is.
You also need to think about TV deals. Championship clubs get more than the lower leagues. Some clubs are very dependent on that money to balance the books for Profit and Sustainability. The upheaval this would create might force some clubs into administration. Championship finances are very precarious for some clubs. Asking clubs to increase the risk of moving down the pyramid just to give the poor players more rest isn't going to happen.
Great idea on paper. I really do agree with it. But in practice it would be very hard to make it work.
I agree with that in principle. But your last paragraph explains why it will never happen.
Also you would need to restructure the whole league. Would you have four divisions with 80 professional clubs or five divisions with 100 professional clubs.
And how would you decide who gets bumped down the ladder?
Four teams would have to drop from the Championship to L1.
There could be many reasons for that: - There's no winter break over here - A 46 game season is way more games than anyone else plays - Maybe Gaz's players were better prepared in summer 2023 than Marti's were this summer - Maybe EFL players have the wrong lifestyle (copyright R. Martinez) - Maybe it's because we play more three-game weeks - Maybe we should stop taking risks on players with dodgy injury records - Maybe the sun is in Taurus and the moon in Uranus - Maybe there's a gypsy curse (copyright C. Whittingham)
Or maybe there's a dozen more factors I can't be bothered to think of. Dumb luck could certainly be one of them.
I had forgotten that Roberto Martinez is a qualified physio. So maybe he knows what he is talking about. But the data from the EFL would suggest he was wrong. Soft tissue injuries are a growing problem in the game. It can't all be down to lifestyle.
In his interview with Hoopsa he mentioned he was playing with a dislocated shoulder through the end of last season.
Would he show the same dedication if he had a new contract from us in his back pocket?
Maybe he would. Who knows for sure. But we've been stung a few times in recent years when ageing players here on loan who would run through a brick wall when they were trying to earn a new contract became a bit more protective of their bodies once the ink had dried on a new deal.
Not pointing the finger or blaming anyone. It's just human nature.
The frustration around injuries is understandable, particularly since we seemed to do so well last season.
But this is not just a QPR problem.
A study published last year by Leeds Beckett University showed that there tends to be a spike in injuries around August and the Christmas period, and that hamstring injuries are on the increase in the EFL:
"CONCLUSIONS Match and training incidence remained stable across all seasons as well as muscle and ligament injury incidence. While there were significant increases in hamstring injury incidence and hamstring match injury incidence. This highlights the need for football performance practitioners to review current practices around hamstring prevention and adapt them in line with current literature to reduce prevalence and incidence over subsequent seasons. Re-injuries were found to cause a higher burden than the initial injury, indicating the important of practitioners return to play and rehabilitation strategies within these environments to promote a reduction in re-injury rates. This inter-seasonal information helps to address the gap of longitudinal epidemiological research identified within the EFL, often underrepresented in injury audit reviews. Future longitudinal epidemiological research is needed in differing cohorts to better enable practitioners to identify trends and manage injury risk reduction more effectively."
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