04 December 2023 , 21:00
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Jeff Stelling wants to see major changes to the way the FA Cup third round draw is conducted with lower league outfits prioritised.
The weekend's draw produced some heavyweight ties with Arsenal taking on Liverpool and Newcastle getting the chance to renew their rivalry with Sunderland. At the other end of the spectrum Maidstone and Eastleigh, two non-league sides, have been handed draws against EFL outfits.
Maidstone of the National League South will host either Stevenage or Port Vale with fifth-tier outfit Eastleigh travelling to Newport County or Barnet. Neither ties are likely to be attractive enough to be televised, which would mean a major pay day for both sides, with other games set to take precedent despite the efforts made by each team.
Stelling proposed a new system which lends itself to getting the non-league outfits their lucrative ties against a major name. He said on TalkSPORT: “I’m not interested in Arsenal against Liverpool in the FA Cup, I see it in the Premier League, not interested at all.
"What worries me is some of the smaller teams who get through to this stage. You look at Eastleigh and Maidstone, they played five games to get to this stage and they are looking for a bumper payday.
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“And what happens? They get a rotten draw. No chance of TV coverage by the way, no chance of a big payday. What they need to do is seed the third round draw of the FA Cup. For goodness sake, it is not too difficult.”
Stelling wants to see a change to the third round drawHe explained his vision: “We have got 20 teams who qualify. They’ve come through round one and round two and all the qualifying rounds before that. You pick them out of the bag, home or away, and then you put the rest of the teams from the Premier League and Championship, all 44 of them, and you pick out 20 of those teams and they will play the lower league sides.
“So every lower league team gets a bumper payday in the third round, they might get TV as well. And there’s 24 teams left over from the Premier League and Championship. You can still get Arsenal against Liverpool if that’s what you really want.
Eastleigh saw off Reading to make the third round (Charlie Crowhurst/Getty Images)“But what you really want is for lower league and non-league sides to have their moment in the sun, to have their big pay-day. Because at the end of the day, the big clubs are only there because of the grassroots clubs.”