It seems likely that UEFA would support the move. They have always preferred teams to qualify via league placing, as it is thought to be a better guarantee of quality than winning a "less prestigious" cup. And with most countries not even having a second cup competition like ours, they'd prefer England to be brought into line with the rest of Europe.

Of course, Arsenal have played a large part (along with Man Utd and Chelsea) in reducing the prestige of the competition even further by fielding under-strength sides.

Since the scrapping of the Cup-Winners Cup, the FA Cup winners go into the UEFA cup instead, and this further reduces the strength of the League Cup's claim (after all, the Euro-reward for winning the FA Cup ought to be better than that for winning the League Cup).

But that factor could be turned on its head again if a proposal to UEFA from the Italian Football Federation goes through. Also reported by Opta, the Italians propose that the club which currently takes the final Champions League place, or rather the final Champions League qualifying competition place (ie 3rd in England, 4th in Italy, etc) should have to play-off against the Cup-Winners to see who gets the chance to play in the Champs League and who goes straight into the UEFA Cup.

It's a nice idea to try to raise the status of Cup competitions again, but there is a danger that UEFA won't think it complicated enough.

We have a novel idea though: since there's a League-based European competition for teams that win (or do well in) national leagues, how about a simple European Cup competition specifically for those teams that win their national Cup competitions? It's a wonder that no-one's thought of it before.