BRENDAN Rodgers’ team selection for their Champions League game at the Bernabeu this week gave me a crazy idea.

How about the only teams allowed in the competition are those who can prove they are serious about trying to win it.

The Anfield boss denied he sacrificed the game against Real Madrid to rest star players like Steven Gerrard and Raheem Sterling for today’s lunchtime kick-off against Chelsea.

But it is hard not to reach that conclusion.

In one respect, you can understand the logic after Real wiped the floor with Liverpool’s full-strength side in the reverse fixture.

What is hard to grasp, however, is why Rodgers might have decided to put Premier League points above Champions League progression.

The Reds now need to win their final two matches to make it through to the knockout stages in Europe, with a place in the Europa League a poisoned chalice if they fail to pip Basel to the second spot in Group B.

Yet, with 12 points to make up on Chelesa, Liverpool are even less likely to challenge for the Premier League title.

So the only possible conclusion you can make is that fourth place in the Premier League is Rodgers’ real objective.

And that is what really gets my goat about modern football thinking – the premise that to be in a competition like the Champions League is more important than to try to win it.

Wanderers fans will know where I am going with this after Gary Megson’s infamous decision to rest his key players for a crucial last 16 Europa League tie at Sporting Lisbon so they would be fit to face Wigan in a relegation battle – which they lost!

That seems to be de rigueur these days.

Football clubs spend all their time trying to finish in Champions League or Europa League places then spend the early part of the next season trying their hardest to get knocked out.

There is at least a financial incentive for clubs to remain in the Champions League for as long as they can. But these days, if a club does not believe it can win the Europa League, and claim the Champions League qualifying spot that is now bestowed on the winners, then they seem to have little or no interest in competing.

The same twisted logic has also affected the two domestic competitions.

Top flight, and even Championship managers now rest their best players for the League Cup and FA Cup for some greater purpose.

What is the point if football if you are not trying to win things?

Enough is enough. I say respect the competition or face expulsion.