but we are going to start with the FA Cup and today the Football Association have announced some major changes to the competition starting from next season for more on this you can see I've been joined by Gail Davis and Gail the headline is that replays will be scrapped from the first round from next season tell us more okay well we'll just wind back to why they're being scrapped and that's because the Champions League uh and European competitions is growing and that means there is less time in the schedule and from the rounds onwards this the last few years we've seen replays scrapped uh there's still going to be replays in theultimate qualification rounds but those traditional games in round three round four uh are going to be no more and that's a huge blow to a lot of the efl clubs you imagine all of them um are going to be scratching their heads and probably looking at their balance sheets because you think about some of those epic third round replays fourth round plays um they're a Lifeline to many of those clubs uh we just had a very quick look the likes of exitor going to Manchester United uh and that's then kind of takes them back to exitor in a replay and that saved the club because of the way the gate receipts um are shared out you look at ying and stevenage and those games against um Newcastle in recent years uh cray Valley playing Charon all really kind of important games for for the lifeline of these clubs and all scrapped there are various other changes which we'll go on to in a moment yes we will indeed let's get on to them now because just run us through it what are the other key changes that have been announced right well all rounds are to be played on weekends and what we mean is that recently we've seen fixtures played the Wednesdays the Thursdays the Fridays The Saturdays and the Sundays um and this is kind of key fourth fifth and quarterfinals they won't be clashed ING with Premier League clubs uh no replays as we mentioned from the first round proper and no Premier League matches on the FA Cup weekends um Premier League will increase the funding for those Grassroots clubs to around about 33 million pounds a year what it also means is that the winter break although it wasn't official this year the way that the fixtures were stacked means that um a lot of clubs did get time to go where you think back to Arsenal uh they had a 10-day window they went off to Dubai they had that summer break they came back rejuvenated refreshed and went on that amazing run and they there they still are in the title race for example but that won't happen what they are going to do is have an extra week in the summer but it does question doesn't it the players clearly need a break in the summer but they probably need it more in January so some of these Premier League clubs are going to look at this and think okay we haven't got the winter bake where does the FA Cup maybe fit into their Ambitions for the year and um it may force them to have a a look at other things if they've got that schedule backed up with champions league and big Premier League games I mean essentially Mark Bellingham the chief executive of the fa um has said that he wants to make sure that it they use one of their biggest assets at the fa they want it to have the Showcase it deserves that's their argument we're still waiting to hear from the efl on it yeah very interesting interesting to get their reaction as well Gail thank you very much for now [Music]