Clubs or even leagues.. Darlo going pear shaped...many other teams up **** creek also...Pompey may well be off soon (again) by the look of things.. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/16706372.stm So in ten years time, how will football in England look? The money clubs will get bigger and stronger, and the smaller feeder clubs will be neglected, but this has a knock on effect, as players have to come from somewhere.. So E Short getting SAFC on a sound financial basis, is the best move he can do. But how do you see the game looking in the future?
I certainly see the lower leagues going regional like it was years ago. I fail to see the point in the likes of Hartlepool traveling all the way the Torquay, Keep it northern and southern..I reckon that would encouarge more fans and keep the costs down. I also see sometime in the near future many of the lower leagues going part time.
Not a bad shout more "Derbies" more away fans bigger crowds etc might help. Plus the North/South divide play offs for promotion would provide a bit of spice
If a league club go's out of business, will they promote another one from the BSP to keep the number at 92?
It's happened before. I think Maidstone were the last to go 'mid season'. When it happens the club's results record is removed and the league table recalculated. Numbers are then made up again at the start of the following season.
We are the only country that has 4 professional leagues and 92 clubs. If that can't be sustained then I'm afraid that's life. You simply can't keep throwing money at it. Maybe one day football will wake up and smell the coffee And players will realise their wages are going to kill the game. Then again the greedy ****ers probably don't give a **** anyway.
Remember also, a few teams in the conference are full time. As for Portsmouth, surely the financial director and the tea lady job share! How many times..
Is it the players though, its the same in any profession really, 1 company pays XXX,XXX so another company has to pay YYY,YYY so the 1st company pays ZZZ,ZZZ to get the best. You have Man City/Chelsea etc in the PL, Leicester in the Championship, League 1 not sure, Charlton probably, League 2 Crawley (who were paying massive wages in the conference last year). There are just too many professional clubs, and i hate to say this, but relegation is the killer (look at Darlington, yes the stadia is killing them but if they were not in the conference, they would be getting another 3,000 on their gate and some TV revenue/better advertising revenue. You also have the fact that none of the big clubs pay silly money for Championship/League 1 players anymore, the odd 1 or 2 Smalling/Chamberlain but not as many as they used to, so the cash isnt filtering down into the lower leagues, its all going abroad these days. It all adds up (or takeaways in this case).
They'd still manage to have a chat about the football league show first!! It's not the players it's SkySports and the money they give to the Premier league. Prize money for the PL is crazy and this started everything off. If the prize money was more evenly distributed through all 4 leagues then you'd find a better financial structure surely. Prize money wise they say it's just over 800k per place with 20th position getting £800k (total payout of £168m ish) If first place gets a little less but you have a sliding scale where second gets less (so £10m for first place, then 9, 8, 7 then go down at half million per place (as the top 4 all end up with a decent payout in the coming season cos of Champs League) So top = 10m, 2nd, 3rd and 4th, -1m per place, 5th & 6th - 0.5m per place, then 4 @-300k per place and the rest at -200k per place. The bottom tesams would be better off and the top ones would be worse relatively speaking but this would also mean that there was £60m left to give to the other 3 leagues - 30m, 20m & 10m for each (also I'd have the 3 promoted teams getting more prize money than the relegated teams) None of this is including TV money but I think it'd be much fairer for everyone outside of the top flight and the numbers can be changed to make even more money for the lower divisions.
I can see it happening, flanders. But the problem with the old Third Division North and South was stagnation. Not only that, but with only one promoted from each, clubs had very little to play for. If you got, say, a Southampton or a Charlton down there, the rest needn't have bothered turning up for a year. If it happens again, I think we'd have to have four relegated from the Championship, and two up from each of the Third Divisions. The problem is, I can't see Championship chairmen voting for that. (Funnily enough, I was at Carlisle on the first day the Fourth Division was ever played. They beat Aldershot 1-0 with a fine goal from Alf Ackerman in 80 mins. August, '58 off the top of my head).
