Sports
FA Cup replays to be scrapped next season
The FA Cup replays are set to be scrapped by the Football Association starting from next season.
This is in reaction to the collapse of the New Deal for Football which stands as a big blow for English Football League clubs who are the most beneficiaries of the FA Cup replays.
This means the EFL are now likely to withdraw their offer to scrap two-legged Carabao Cup semi-finals next season.
However, it is still likely that the Football Association could go against this and remove replays from the competition to ease fixture congestion.
The replays have been a standing conflict for a lot of premier league clubs, notably the top sides in recent years who have found its inclusion problematic as it allows for more fixtures in an already busy calendar campaign.
For sides competing in the premier league, European competitions, having to replay the full 90-minutes of a tie that ended in a stalemate is believed by the top sides as an avoidable chaos for a thin squad.
Replays have not been played from the fifth-round of the competition from the 2018/2019 season, however, those in the third and fourth rounds provide revenue for lower division clubs.
Televised third and fourth-round replays are worth £40,000 and £55,000 respectively to each club, who also receive an equal 45 per cent share of gate receipts irrespective of where the tie is played, hence the reluctance by lower league clubs to be scrapped.
