Fixing the League cup and FA cup.

The state of the cup competitions in the English football scene you will tend to hear some common comments. "its only the *** cup, we need to focus on the (Premier) league".

This is because of the amount of money you get from the TV deals for just being involved in the Premier League.
Wolverhampton Wanderers and Fulham came into the league this current season and spend in the region of £100 million each on players due to the excessive amount  of money that comes with being in the Premier League.

When you take everything into account for the English game you will come to the conclusion that all the teams want to get into the Premier League and are content with staying in that League. The Top teams are happy with getting in the top 4 so they can get the extra money for getting into the Champions League.

Only Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City are actually fighting to win the title while spending the amount needed to challenge however they tend to have problems with their managers and players so their forms tend to dip and knock them out of the top 5.

Arsenal are consistent in the way that they do not have a full and capable squad and will miss out on the top spots due to neglect from their owner, Tottenham Hotspurs are only slightly better in the way that they have a complete squad however they will fall very soon as they are not  spending they money they get from these deals to create squad depth while they have the chance.
They have not won a single title or cup in almost 11 years or rather almost 4000 days. This was the League cup and as I stated, this means very little.

I think that these cups are irrelevant and need to have their value reassessed so as to create more meaning in the way people think about them.

The easiest way to change the cups is to change the rewards for winning them, this will provide more incentive to compete in the competition.

I would have the League cup change by removing the Premier League teams from the competition and having the reward for winning the cup the money that it is already linked with plus the third spot for the Premier league promotion. Removing the third promotion spot from the Championship gives a greater sense of emergency in fighting for the top spot of that league. The Playoff will also change as we can have three games in the knock out format where the 2-5 place finishers will play against each other in the fight to get into the premier league.

The FA cup can stay the way that it is in the current format however I would have the price be the 4th Champions league spot. This way you can have strong teams in the Championship (contradiction in terms) try and fight to get into the champions league!

This will be incredibly unlikely as the Premier league teams will fight harder to win this title due to there being only 3 spot in the Premier League now. This way teams  like Arsenal and Tottenham who do not deserve to be in the Champions League will no longer be gaining entry unless they make improvement and spend money in transfer windows in order to keep up with the current leaders in the title race.

With the Top 4 teams in the English game being Manchester City, Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelsea. Where they spend the money required to keep them competing for the honours, Tottenham and Arsenal will have to focus on the FA cup to get into the Champions League. This also opens up the possibility that teams that want to spend and would have been focusing on breaking into the top 4 will now be looking to staying in the Premier League and winning the FA cup. This will make the cup ties a lot more interesting as teams that are struggling for form will still have the chance to battle the European elites.

Imagine Everton, Leicester and West Ham who have struggled for form this season will be able to and actually will fight for a trophy in the hopes to get into the Champions League.