GROUP THERAPY’S NEEDED FOR LOTS OF BOSSES IN CUP
The Pre-season Cup has been up and running for a few weeks but it ’s already got some gaffers reaching into the drinks cabinet for something to numb the pain.
At some point amid the haze they will have asked the same question we all should at this time of year.
What is the point of the Premier Sports Cup group stage?
Answers on the back of a postage stamp.
It seems it’s only purpose is to give managers grief.
Hibs boss Lee Johnston has already filleted his team after losing to Falkirk.
Kilmarnock’s Derek McInnes has a rebuilding job on his hands in Ayrshire yet has been forced to play competitive football while the scaffolding is still up.
It’s already at the stage where a couple of Premiership teams could be bounced out of one of the three trophies up for grabs before a new name is even chiselled on to the Claret Jug.
It just seems so pointless – and so unfair. There are still six weeks left of the transfer window yet a third of the season’s targets could be already gone before new faces get the chance to pose with scarves above their heads.
The entire premise seemed like an experiment when it was first rolled out but when the results are so uninspiring it’s hard to work out why the trial continues.
There might be penalty shoot-outs to decide draws but sometimes it feels like managers of midranking sides just can’t win in this competition.
They try to treat the matches like glorified pre-season friendlies and experiment with a few things, then they end up taking a dull one and the punters are on their backs right away.
They go gung-ho and a couple of key men land in the treatment room after some lower league lad with half-a-yard of pace to find after two weeks in Magaluf goes in later than a ScotRail train.
Win all the group games? No big deal. You’re meant to.
The entire thing is the definition of a thankless task.
Weirdly, the only sides who would actually gain from playing in competition at this time of year are the ones who are not even in it.
Scottish sides in European competitions constantly complain about being under-cooked when
they go out of the Vauxhall Euro Conference to a team of Scandinavian fishermen who are halfway through their season.
Yet they are the ones who are sitting on the sidelines while the rest try to muster up some kind of enthusiasm in the first week in July.
Teams who usually dream about a decent cup run, maybe even going all the way to Hampden, can hit the buffers in front of terraces in Fife.
The likes of St Mirren, Ross County and Killie have all created magical memories in this competition in recent times.
Yet the dream can end up in smoke even before most people have nodded off.
When it was first introduced it was a stealth way of testing the water over summe r football.
Fill a gap in the schedule and see if it f lies with the punters.
But it has been a halfway house. And it has managed to wreck the plans of managers and the holidays of players.
Bizarrely, we don’t debate the merits or otherwise of summer football in the summer.
We do it in the winter, usually after a couple of call- offs and a fixture backlog when the brass monkeys are nervously clutching their haw maws.
The weather turns and the argument gets filed away until the next winter.
It ain’t going to happen. But this Premier Sports Cup group stage malarkey shouldn’t happen either.
And if the format gets binned in favour of a return to a seeded, knockout competition then there’s sure to be more than a few gaffers raising a glass.
Six weeks till the transfer window shuts and a third of trophy targets could be gone