Jeff Stelling calls for a completely new FA Cup format

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Jeff Stelling calls for a completely new FA Cup format – as he makes bold claim after Arsenal and Liverpool are drawn together in third round clash

  • The draw for the third round of this season’s FA Cup took place on Sunday 
  • Arsenal vs Liverpool and Sunderland vs Newcastle were the pick of the ties 
  • We expected perfection from VAR – we haven’t got it: Listen to It’s All Kicking Off

Former Soccer Saturday host Jeff Stelling believes the FA Cup third round draw should be seeded to give lower and non-league sides their ‘moment in the sun’.

This season’s third round round took place over the weekend, providing ties such as Arsenal vs Liverpool and Sunderland vs local rivals Newcastle.

While many were excited by such big games coming so early in the competition, Stelling was not.

‘I’m not interested in Arsenal against Liverpool in the FA Cup, I see it in the Premier League, not interested at all,’ he told talkSPORT.

‘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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Former Soccer Saturday host Jeff Stelling believes the third round draw should be seeded

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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.

The 68-year-old continued: ‘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.

‘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.’

Stelling believes a change of format is needed to give smaller clubs their moment in the sun

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