The Great British Cup

Here is my new idea for a football tournament between Scottish, English and Welsh sides.
A cup between the Scottish, Welsh and English sides called the Great British cup. This would be a great soccer trophy idea.
The Competitors
1. The top 20 teams in Scottish league who have not qualified for Europe.
2. The English League one and League two teams. That is 48 sides.
3. The top 12 sides in the Welsh league.

This equals 80 teams.

The format.
Group stage.
20 Groups of 4, played home and away. Each group must have one Scottish side and can only have one Welsh side. Each group must also have atleast one Englisgh league side and one English league two side.
Knockout stage
The top teams from each group qualify for the last 32. As you can tell that is only 20 teams. As you can see 12 teams are still needed for the rest of the last 32. So a preliminary round then takes place between all the runners up of each group and the 4 best 3rd placed teams, to decide the last 12 teams for the final 32 sides.
There then follows a knockout stage cup this can be two leg or one leg.

This would be a fun great tournament, with lots of interesting teams to see.
It would be a great replacement for European football something that most English league one and two sides can realistically never aim for. This is also true of many Scottish league sides.
Benefit for Scottish sides
Scottish sides would benefit enormously in getting to play other bigger sides, from a different league. Plus they would be able to gain experience of European style tournament. Attendances in the old Anglo Scottish cup for Scottish English matches were very high higher than normal league matches.
Benefit for Welsh sides
They would make huge amounts of money compared to games they nornally play in,. So it would give them much needed revenue.
Benefits for English sides
The opportunity to play different teams form other countries. Many teams in England will pay the same sides over and over again. this gives them some different set of teams to play. Plus English sides used to get very good attendances in the Anglo Scottish cup.

This would have much chance as the football league trophy of having a good chance.

Timing of the trophy
I would play the group stages in late summer to mid autumn. I would not play the matches in winter or late autumn as you do not want to have team traveling up from the South of England 400 miles to find the game has been snowed off. Then the knockout stages could happen from mid spring to summer.
The teams in this trophy would not be in European matches. So the games could played until the end of the season.


A typical group to be expected could be
Oldham Athletic
Lincoln City
Haverfordwest County
Falkirk
or
Milton Keynes Dons
Northampton Town
Queen of the South
Aberystwyth Town

A glamour draw could be
Leeds United
Norwich City
Hibernian
Northampton Town
Change the final destination each year.
The trophy final could be held in England, Scotland and Wales in turn each year.
The final could be played at Hampden (or Murrayfield, Celtic Park or Ibrox) the Millennium stadium and Wembley (Or Old Trafford, or another big English ground) in turn.
We could have the Northern Irish and Republic of Ireland sides in it too, but this would mean a different name, for the trophy, plus some clubs might have issues with travel over the sea on a week night, rather than all the matches being played on one island, where easy road transport is always a main option.

This would be a great fun trophy with the opportunity to play other sides from other countries to play in major stadiums in a final.
Isle of Man houses