I’m an ideas man. I came up with the plug-in air freshener when I was 11 years old, only to be thwarted by Glade a few years later (scorn and vengeance). I wondered why engineers couldn’t make the black boxes in airplanes floatable and devised a drill-bit scheme to help them tunnel their way out of seafloor wreckage. The black boxes, not the engineers. And, when it comes to Arsenal and the rest of the English Premier League, I have even more ideas, more tangible ideas. I don’t have the ear of airplane engineers or the air-freshening community (yet), but I do have the ear of the football community. And I think it’s time to renovate the Carling Cup.

There are a lot of cups in football, some have argued too many cups that end up diluting the competitiveness and value of the Premier League title. I can’t say I entirely disagree with that, but, seriously, we love football, so more football is always a good thing (except mid-season international friendlies, let’s just nix those, eh?). I don’t want to reduce the number of matches, the summer itself can be awfully dreary without football, I just want the football we do watch to be exciting. The problem is that with the FA Cup, the Carling Cup, and any international cups and friendlies all taking away from the health, fitness, and competitiveness of the core competition, something’s got to give. Whether it be a plague of injuries or a disparity in competitiveness between clubs, something bad is going to happen to wake up the governing bodies to the fact that the value of “the trophy” is being diminished.

Arsene Wenger has been a pioneer of sorts because of those worries, realizing that the Carling Cup is an opportunity to rest his stars (or just to keep them on regular rest), retain squad fitness for the Premier League, and incentivize Youth and Reserves players to stay with the club. Young players are increasingly impatient these days, expecting to be in the first team before they hit puberty. But giving them more than just small-time Reserves squad matches in front of a few hundred fans is a way to keep those players happy and hungry for their next step up within the club. Wenger runs out the kids, and, from my perspective, more power to him. I think it’s the perfect way to approach the Carling Cup, not because people shouldn’t try in that competition, no, but because it keeps the Cup relevant for Arsenal fans and allows the first team to focus on winning the Premier League and the Champions League.

So here’s my idea … just like FIFA and the FA have started imposing player quotas on leagues and competitions, let’s flip it. Let’s put player quotas on the Carling Cup. What I mean is that X amount of players should have to be from the Reserves or Youth squads, or it can even be an age restriction, with X amount of players having to be under a certain age. Not everyone should have to be from those squads, you can still retain some elements of your first team or even your substitutes bench into the CC squad, but the focus should be on growing, rewarding, and motivating younger players.

More and more clubs around the Premier League are realizing that their squads are being stretched to the breaking point by the addition of cup matches (look at Fulham last year in the Europa League), and as a result are already starting to put their kids out in the Carling Cup or other cup competitions. It’s a natural reaction for the top clubs to try to keep their core healthy and focused because the real prize should be the Premier League or the Champions League title. For the “lower” clubs, winning those trophies has always been seen as a gasping lifeline to glory, a chance to compete against the best in the league and come away with some stunning silverware for a stunned fanbase. But the reality is much different than the perception … Outside of Leicester City in 2000, the competition has been almost entirely dominated by big PL clubs in the last 10 years: Manchester United has won it three times, Chelsea twice, and Liverpool twice as well.

Turning the competition into a so-called “Kid’s Cup” would actually give more opportunity to smaller clubs to bring home silverware as well. Bigger clubs generally have good youth systems, but many of those players come from other academies and, with the new incentive of a revamped Carling Cup, lower-tier teams built around youth would have a competitive advantage over some of the top teams in England and would also have a better chance of keeping their youth players within their own ranks. It would restore balance to the Cup and allow bigger clubs to focus on the Premier League and the Champions League.

A team may not win the Premier League, but being able to bring home the “new” Carling Cup trophy, showing that you’re on the brink of greatness with your Reserves and Youth talent, would be a compelling story and a great way to keep the Cup relevant. I don’t want players to leave their clubs, I want more home-grown, academy-raised stars who climb through the ranks, impress in early cups, and come screaming into the first team when they’re ready. The Carling Cup is a huge opportunity to make that happen the right way.