Football League - could do better

The Football League could do better on their website. I really don't want to talk about the Liverpool game last night. But this aspect of Carling Cup is worth talking about: the Football League's website.

Last night the official Liverpool FC website published the team sheet 45 minutes before kick-off, as usual. However, the first draft saw Benayoun starting and on the subs bench. The next had six subs. This sparked a debate on the best Liverpool fans' site, Red and White Kop: how many substitutes are you allowed in the Carling Cup?

The conspiracy theorists argued that maybe a player had refused to play, so disappointed was he to not be in the starting XI. I tried to find out the rules. I went to Google and entered Carling Cup rules the 2007/08 version. The first result was this badly formatted page giving access to the rules as a pdf (a pet hate).

Rule 9.1 states that the team is allowed five substitutes of which no more than three can take part. And yet both teams named seven substitutes.

It could be that both teams broke the rules - or it could be that the Football League hasn't updated their website. Either way, having out of date material on the site, ranked number one on Google isn't much use to anyone.