The FA Cup is fine on its own. We don’t need the EFL Cup too. Most clubs priorities the FA Cup way more, it’s a more prestigious prize and the tournament has way more fixtures. Clubs also prioritise league matches over the EFL Cup anyway, so the EFL just adds to the fixture congestion of a lot of teams. Players are getting injured across every team anyway.
During a busy fixture schedule, clubs have to put together a team to play in the EFL cup midweek whilst trying to save their best players for the important league match 3 days later, but also trying not to get humiliated too badly in a Cup game that most teams don’t really care too much about.
I think that they should exclude the Top 4 or Top 8 teams from the previous season from the Premier League. There’s absolutely no money in it for the big teams and it used to serve as a springboard for the bench. However Man City and now others have joined in saying it’s a trophy and they want to win it at all costs, so they put their best players on and the reserves or lower division players cannot compete.
It’s a tournament for reserves and 2nd/3rd tier clubs. It really would be cool if it stayed that way.