Some of you might know that the Football League is considering a ground-breaking proposal now. As per this proposal, all draws will be followed by a penalty shoot-out which would give the winning team a bonus point. In practice, if you lose the match, you get no points and if you win you get three - this doesnt change. If you draw and lose the penalty shoot-out you get one point and you get two points if you win the shootout after the draw.

This very idea of shoot-out after a draw makes me puke. This is completely unwarranted. I’m not a big fan of penalty shootouts even in the knock-out competitions but you dont have a choice there. But why in a league competition? What’s wrong is splitting points in a draw. One of best things ever happened in football when the league started awarding 3 points to win instead of just 2 some 25 years back. Now that has brought so much to club football. Teams realised that winning is more important than ever and this has certainly helped football in a positive way in making the game more entertaining. Whereas, to have penalty shootout after every draw is absolute bullshit. Okay, in the long run, one day team England will win a world cup match after penalties. Apart from that, this is sheer waste of time.

We certainly need draws, of course, the one-point draws. Nobody wants to settle for a single point when a goal can get them three points. In the proposed system, it’s quite possible that both teams, after 60-70 minutes, start playing for the penalty shootout instead of opening up a risky attack and get 2 points and thus making the game a pain to watch. Atleast, currently in the league, I dont see teams playing for a draw, unless there is a very good reason. The very purpose of awarding 3 points for a win would be defeated with this new thing. If they still intend to go with this 2-point draws, then an outright win should get 4 points!

Football League chairman Lord Brian Mawhinney said this:

We cannot afford to be complacent - people are always talking to me about how we can get more goals and more excitement in football. I understand that it is not instinctively where clubs would go but if you don’t change in a changing world then you can fall behind.

His intentions are okay but he has chosen the wrong solution. See, I’m completely enjoying the Premiership and I think there is enough excitement already and there is no need to squeeze our squirrel brains on this. And even if we need more excitement in football, goals are not the only source of excitment in football. I’ve seen so many 0-0 draws that were more interesting than many 2-1 win. So, it’s not just about goals. It’s kind of public knowledge that Spain and Italy produce better quality footballers than England. If the quality of the players improve, that would be great for the game. Instead of investing in the long term solution, we should not be going around awarding 2 points for a draw, scrapping the offside rule, increasing the goal area, playing without a goalkeeper and all that shit.