A statement from the FA today revealed that a former Wolves CEO was part of a panel that approved the removal of the FA Cup replays.
It was announced on Thursday that England’s most loved cup competition will once again be undergoing more changes next season.
Replays have been a common feature throughout the tournament but have slowly been cut down over the years. This is mainly due to the backlash from Premier League managers citing that it causes too much fixture congestion.
Thomas Frank was one critic when Wolves forced Brentford to a replay with the Danish manager unhappy about the rule. Gary O’Neil’s side then went on to beat the Bees 3-2 before they went on to beat West Brom at the Hawthorns 2-1.
Now it seems that the FA has given in to their demands with cup replays being removed starting from the 1st round next season.
This has caused widespread backlash from the lower league clubs and fans across the country.
As a result, the FA has released a statement claiming that this change was agreed upon by a panel of representatives which included former Wolves CEO Jez Moxey.
Jez Moxey ‘accepted’ FA Cup replays being scrapped
Jez Moxey was at Wolves for 16 years where he was a very unpopular figure among the Molineux faithful.
Moxey left the club in 2016 upon Fosun’s takeover and moved on to Norwich. This didn’t last long and he soon took up a role at Burton Albion in 2017.
Here, he was appointed to the EFL board as the EFL’s representative for League One in 2019, a title he retained in 2022.
As a result, he is also part of the Professional Game Board (PGB) which were the four EFL representatives present.
According to the FA’s statement on Friday, the four EFL representatives, which included Moxey, were present at the meeting that proposed the scrapping of replays. This decision was ‘accepted by all parties’.
EFL refutes the FA’s claim
Shortly after the announcement from the FA, the EFL made their own statement. This highly contradicts the previous statement in regard to the EFL’s role in the decision.
One section states that the representatives from the EFL did challenge the change and were told clubs ‘would be comfortable’ with no replays. They were also advised that the fixture list needed to be agreed to ‘as presented’ due to it being an FA competition.
Millwall chief Steve Kavanagh, who is also an EFL representative, hit back at the statement. He told The Mirror: “The first I knew of this announcement was when people were sat around the table [yesterday].
“The FA statement is very clear: this is an agreement between the FA and the English Premier League. This has nothing to do with the EFL. We’re not party to that agreement and we’ve not been included in that agreement. We’ve not been consulted and in fact, I’ve got no idea what’s in that agreement. This is the FA doing a deal with the Premier League, and that’s their right, however, it does have impacts on the rest of the pyramid.
“The FA have now done that deal without agreeing any compensation for EFL clubs. For a faceless spokesperson to then go out and try to shift the finger of blame when they’re getting flack to the EFL and, more pointedly, naming people such as myself, Rick Parry, Peter Risdale and the clubs as having, in some way, signed this off. That’s a deflection of the highest order and it’s not true of reality.”
FA Cup replays must stay
Any fan knows that anything can happen in football. You only have to look down two divisions and see what is happening to Reading as they struggle to keep their football club alive.
Not too long ago, Wolves were in a similar situation until Sir Jack Haywood saved the side from liquidation.
For many of the lower league teams, an FA Cup run can keep their club going for years and replays are a vital part of that process. Scrapping replays will only hurt the competition further.
English football has had plenty of radical changes over the last decade from the introduction of five substitutions to the addition of VAR.
What many Wolves fans must ask themselves is, why should replays be scrapped to only help the ‘big six’?