FOOTBALL LEAGUE 1888 - 2016 Rest In Peace

I have just been reading through the FA's latest proposals for the introduction of a new league structure containing Premier League B Teams, and I have to say that its an appalling idea! The ramifications thrown up by these proposals will result in the ultimate death of the Football League! The football league pyramid system has sustained our national game since its inception in the 1880s and the integrity of the football league just has to be protected from this latest act of blatant vandalism!

The blazers at the FA including the Buffoon Greg Dyke should all hang their heads in shame! They should be protecting our national game not sucking up to the Premiership and its mega rich owners who couldn't give two fooks about the lower leagues or the state of English football in general. When will they realise that the Football League is hugely popular with the fans and is the most competitive set of leagues in World Football. Why shoe horn in a new league containing premier league reservists and clog up the promotion/relegation places! It doesn't make any sense!

I am fuming about this and I am sure that fans of lower league clubs will be also! We must stop this idiot Dyke getting his way and destroying the Football League!


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...Dykes-moves-to-shake-up-the-English-game.html

 

To right JWM it's an absolute disgrace!! Perhaps it would improve our national teams chances but at the expense of clubs and communities all around the country. Yet another example of the soul of football being destroyed.

We won't resolve any of the problems in our country unless someone tackles the cash cow of the PL head on and redistributes the wealth throughout the leagues. The amount of pressure on PL managers and even championship managers to get to/stay or win something in the PL is ridiculous and many don't have the courage to put the youngsters in due to the desire for instant success and this problem will remain until the the disparity between the PL and the football league decreases. I thought the team the FA appointed might actually come out with some sensible proposals but this is a disgrace

 

A classic Tweet from the Chairman of Accrington Stanley:

Something along the lines of "2016/17...Great! We will get to fullfill our greatest ambition by playing against Stoke City B"

Just about sums it up really!

 

What is wrong with bringing back the Football Combination League/s.

Would it not just be better to have a couple of divisions of B teams funded by the cash sloshing around in the Premier League, teams from the top two divisions could put B teams in this, they could then have their own relegation, promotion & cup competition.

Anyhow this is probably not going to get off the ground once the PL get their under 23s league up & running.!

 

The idea about preventing non EU players from playing in the Football League is also a classic!

So basically a team that gets relegated from the PL will have to sack all of its Non EU players!

Written on the back of fag packet springs to mind!

 

I'm not entirely against the idea but the issue I have is that it will only apply to the top clubs, so there will certainly not be an Ipswich Town B team.

It will only widen the gap - the so called examples they're trying to follow - Germany, Spain etc just have one or two elite clubs and the rest of the league is entirely redundant. It's also nonsense to suggest that players like Andros Townsend and Ross Barkley would have benefited at all from pitting their wits against the Halifax Town or Luton Town or Cambridge United back line.

I would be a lot more in favour of extending the football league to five and then six divisions and then simply allowing all Premier League, football league and conference clubs to enter B teams that start at the bottom of the pyramid and are not allowed to progress beyond three divisions lower than their parent club or two divisions if a relegation has occurred to the parent club.

That way a title would still be a title.

Under the current proposal you could finish 15th or something and get promoted which is nonsense.

 

I think done right it could put more of a spotlight on the lower leagues and improve gates.

 

Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail also makes a very valid point as to why these proposals are completely unworkable.

FFP Rules are now being rigidly enforced in the Football League so that no football club can overspend on wages etc so how can it be fair that the players in the Premier B Teams will be allowed to earn huge sums more and are not subject to the same strict rules that apply in the football league? Take League 2 where the average player in 2013 earned just £49,600 per annum! An emerging player from a Premier League club will be earning that amount in just over 4 to 6 weeks! This is completely unfair and will distort the league towards the B teams! How can any club be able to compete with that!

 

Warky - the wages are based on turnover which could be astronomical but not breached - it's purely about solvency, so that point is not relevant.

I think it should just simply be the case that all clubs are allowed to run two football teams and if they get into the football league it's on merit and if there a lot of B teams (which I can't see happening) in the football league you expand the divisions.

 

Would the 'B' team only be English players ???

 

Maybe the rich clubs should be stopped from mopping up any youngster that might have some talent so that they can develope at lower league clubs whilst playing competitive football.

 

Exactly.... Nail hit firmly on Head!

If you feel strongly enough about this issue then you can sign this online petition!

http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/the-football-association-say-no-to-b-teams

 

Weighty, that's the best response on this thread yet.

Premiership clubs fill their ranks with far too many players and try to suck up all of the best talent from lower down before they've even had a chance to develop properly or get a good number of competitive matches under their belt. Look how long it's taken Connor to break into the Sunderland team, you could argue that he would have been better off with us for the last couple of seasons and then sold.

 

While I accept the need to encourage the development of English/British youth talent I do agree that B teams being introduced into the league are the wrong way to go about it, at the moment

If they are going ahead with B teams I would want to see
- it open to all clubs to introduce one
- the continuation of parallel youth competitions encompassing all ages from 16 - 21 with no overage players. - that way you get a progression youth system B team 1st team
- Clubs can only offer a player one B team contract. At the end of it they must either sell/release the player or offer a 1st team contract.
- 1st team contracts for all players under 23 must include a minimum appearance clause

 

I like your minimum appearance idea Mike, that sounds good.

 

I don't see why it has to be installed into the current league structure, why not just create a decent under 21 league system to go along side the current league with a decent amount of prize money ( by reducing money given to PL clubs) if there is good money available then it will be competitive.

 

Don't agree that Lionel Messi would have been as good a footballer training and playing for Torquay as Barcelona B, neither would Wayne Rooney or David Beckham have been better off at a lower league club.

The top clubs have better facilities and more driven youngsters. Walking through the gates at a top club's training ground is going to give you a top player mentality and an edge and that would be better served in an elite B team than a backwater lower league club.

 

How can you manage a football team with a contract like that? Why would you ever take a risk on signing any young player and having to play them ahead of your star? What happens if they are a substitute? What happens if they're taken off after 2 minutes? And what if they're injured? How serious does the injury have to be? It doesn't make any sense to the integrity of football management.

 

Exactly this, looking at it in the 16-19 age range we certainly have some talented players, the problem is the big clubs buy them up expecting them to be the next big thing but the managers (due to the short term nature of football) don't have the courage to put them in the team and then at a crucial stage of their development they're not playing football or they're playing at a loan club where sometimes it's tough to make a mark when you know it's not your club. Add to which often the manager which bought them is gone a year later meaning there is no continuity in their development

As far as I see it, it may well improve the prospects of our national side slightly but it'll ruin the football league. The biggest thing to be done is to spread the PL wealth throughout the leagues and this will hopefully mean clubs will give managers more time at clubs and therefore more courage to play their younger players.

The reason clubs aren't giving youngsters a chance is due to the pressure on managers to achieve instant success due to the massive finances in the PL and foreign investers who have no interest in football and therefore our youngsters aren't getting the development at a key stages!!! No one seems to have the balls to stand up to the PL though. It's like waiting for the financial crash again with the Big Banks having all the power, it's all about greed and noone has the balls to stop it!!

 

Appearance is a fairly broad term, in general there should be, across the board, something to protect young players when they make the move from lower league clubs. The contract details would be negotiated between both parties whether that be a basic number of league appearences/bench appearences/substitute appearences a good mix but the whole purpose of signing them to play in the first team is that they play in the first team, if they're not ready sign them for the 'B' team/ loan them out/ don't sign them at all until they are ready. Safe guards for the club could be put into the contract aswell in terms of performance/training monitoring, but I would still say that would mean find a loan club to ensure the young player plays games instead of "no, we're just not going to play you". The whole idea is to get young players playing games.

I know you can point to Hewitt as an example this season. Under my minimum appearances he would probably have been promised a large number of appearances. Its all very academic to ask if we would have been better or worse off with him at RB but the consesus I read and hear is that he was no worse than Chambers defensively anyway and showed a lot of promise going forward. My counter point is Cresswell, I think he has become the best LB in league because Jewell and Mick after him trusted him to play at LB. He had a full season under his belt of experience playing in the championship, which or all the improvements seen in Mings because of coaching, is still invaluable (inexperience conceded a penalty).

I accept the whole better training facilities and better coaches thing, but hasn't Jack (or someone we loaned out this season) continued to train with us? Why could that not be the case for premier league teams when they loan out their academy players? As long as these changes are coupled with further drives to improve coaching at all levels it wouldn't be as much of a problem.