Carabao Cup shambles – Why the delay?

The Mag

·19 August 2024

Carabao Cup shambles – Why the delay?

The draw for the Carabao Cup second round was made on Wednesday (14 August).

The draw still split into north and south at this stage.

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Newcastle United ball number 15 in the Carabao Cup second round draw and were picked out to play Nottingham Forest away.

Those second round ties to be played in the week commencing Monday 26 August.

In reality, the Carabao Cup second round matches will start to be played on the Tuesday (27 August).

So in effect, when the draw was made, it was 13 days before the first games will be played.

All of a bit of a shambles, as five days after that draw and still no fans of the 50 clubs (see below) knows when their team will be playing, yet it is only eight days before many of their teams will be playing. With of course 25 of those 50 clubs playing away from home.

It makes no sense whatsoever, especially when Sky Sports are making all these Carabao Cup second round matches available to watch. Yet not even any explanation as to why there is this daft delay in announcing when the matches will be played.

I ‘love’ the fact that ahead of the season we hear all of the various football authorities and broadcasters claiming fans are at the heart of everything, that they will guarantee as much notice of when games will be played/moved, yet very quickly, as always, those promises turn to dust.

As Newcastle United fans, we then also have the major added obstacle of the ridiculous way they sell tickets.

Rather than getting all season ticket holders to apply at the same time, give them for example 24/48 hours to say they want a ticket, then allocate the available tickets to those with the highest number of loyalty points. We have instead this ludicrous ‘system’ whereby you have painfully slow points drops, usually daily (except on weekends!) and then later on maybe twice daily. For Bournemouth, this took 17 days and 17 different points drops before the available tickets were all sold!

You would assume (hope!) that today we will finally get a date and time for the Newcastle United match at Forest,, but as for when the final NUFC fans will find out whether they have got a ticket (or not), your guess is as good as mine.

The full Carabao Cup second round draw here:

Northern section

Grimsby Town v Sheffield Wednesday

Everton v Doncaster Rovers

Blackburn Rovers v Blackpool

Fleetwood Town v Rotherham United

Shrewsbury Town v Bolton Wanderers

Nottingham Forest v Newcastle United

Barrow v Derby County

Leicester City v Tranmere Rovers

Middlesbrough v Stoke City

Barnsley v Sheffield United