Just wanted to share some comments I sort of stumbled upon by accident on the BBC website, gave me a giggle. The comments are on the Millwall 0-1 Yeovil result page. "23. d23 36 Minutes ago Who cares about Yeovil? There should be rules so that smaller teams aren't allowed to play at higher levels, for the good of football. I guess we'll just have to put up with it for a season, they will be going down anyway." "30. d23 25 Minutes ago 27 - What i was saying wasn't meant to be funny? Just expressing an opinion. The championship would be better if with the bigger teams in it, simple. Teams like Wolves, Portsmouth, MK Dons are more profitable and professional and would improve the division. And I support Manchester United, champions on England. They're way better than Yeovil" This last one tops it off though, makes me think they might be a troll. "33. d23 15 Minutes ago 31 - Yes, rules should be applied so that the bigger teams play in the higher leagues, it's not that hard to understand. There's no point of teams like Swansea and Wigan playing at the higest level, neither of them are realistically going to come close to winning silverware."
Right up until the end I was just thinking "this is nothing new, plenty of idiots out there like this guy", then I saw that last sentence. Hilarious.
Yes, this is funny but somehow I think that there will be some sort of restructuring in football within the next 10-15 years which will see something like this happen. Lower-league football is in crisis in many countries in Europe (in WSC this week there is an article about the financial peril of many German clubs) and in France there has been an active campaign to promote their second division clubs which are generally the same level as our third and fourth tier teams in stature. The curious thing about the first few comments is that there is an element of logic in this. Bigger teams will have a larger following and attract larger gates which equals more money. It is ridiculous that teams like Wolves and Portsmouth find themselves in their current circumstances yet they have largely brought the problems upon themselves. An automatic return to a higher level may seem appropriate given the historic status of these two clubs however they are where they are through their own fault and some "smaller " teams like Swansea are where they are through merit. Given the global appeal of the PL I don't think it is unlikely in the future that you may see larger clubs invited to play in a re-structured PL, especially if there is a demand from abroad / TV money. At the moment there is a crisis in French football (not least because of Hollande's tax proposals which have been controversial enough to be contested in the official magazines of clubs such as Olympique Lyonnais when you would have thought that fans would not be interested in player's salaries!) as PSG have a very rich owner who is investing heavily in the club as well as being the owner of the principle football TV channel. Whilst this is a conflict of interest, it is being allowed to persist. Should something similar happen in England, you could imagine TV companies dabbling in the structure of a league to ensure the maximum audience. Whilst it is easy to laugh at the stupidity of the above comments, it is perhaps easy to overlook how football is changing and how newer "Southern" teams like Yeovil, Crawley, MK Dons and Cheltenham have all imposed themselves in a league structure previously heavily biased towards the traditional, Northern clubs. The game is changing and it is these "modern" Southern teams who perhaps offer an alternative to the less viable smaller clubs from the North. I think that football clubs should be allowed to compete of merit and that the romance of doing a "Wimbledon" or a "Swansea" should always be made possible for the good of the gaame. This is what football fans want. But with the increase i appetitie for the game in the Far East, I wonder how soon it will be before money does start talking and the league is re-structured to guarantee the maximum return from league fixtures?
Should always be on merit. Clubs with large support who fail to succeed deserve to be in the lower leagues. As for interest in the PL from abroad, they are only aware of the top clubs and couldn't give a monkeys whether those teams play Swansea, Wolves or Leeds. They certainly don't care if one of the lesser teams was a big club in the 70s or 80s. Now is the moment to be noticed...if the Far East is paying attention and this matters, this is the time to shine...they won't question the history of Southampton or Swansea if they are winning big games. No closed shop for me!
I'm not quite so sure. Granted teams like Man Utd have a massive following (and this will only increase as the Old Traffold PR machine has only just started to get in to gear) but I think a foriegn audience will be more sold on a match where a team has a degree of heritage / history as they will always perceive success with larger clubs. Also worth noting that a clash between Man Utd and Leeds (to take your example) would have far much more at stake than had the former played against Swansea. I would suggest that it would be far easier for a big club to be "sold" to a foriegn audience than someone like Swansea. Although I am 100% on your side in this argument, I am sure that as European football becomes more dominant there will be a scaling down of the PL to a smaller number of clubs and hence matches. I think that there will be very much a vested interest in this and it would not surprise me that, in twenty years time we had a PL of about 16 clubs with no relegation / promotion from or to the Championship. It will be matches like Man Utd v Liverpool that will appeal and as the foriegn TV audience becomes the most influential element of the market, I do feel that the genuine fans will be the losers as the PL takes a more cynical approach to which clubs play in the league. Expect a future league to also include Celtic and Rangers as well as a few "invitees" from the Championsip such as Leeds. This would, in my opinion, probably be a the expense of clubs like Stoke, Swansea, Hull and I am not even convinced that Saints would figure - albeit I think the plans Cortese has for the club would make our exclusion very, very difficult to justify.
To get this, the turkeys would have to vote for Christmas. Could see a few court cases if anyone tried this....restraint of trade.
I don't think the restructuring of football will happen in several years. It has happened and continues to happen. The fact that clubs academies are categorised; the fact that bigger clubs will be able to buy academy players for much less than they would have before. The rules and rewards simply make bigger clubs even bigger. The idea of the Premier League itself was geared to making the bigger clubs richer at the expense of the smaller ones. Time was when smaller clubs had a chance to win something against a much bigger club, a match, a cup, a league, under equal competition. Not anymore. Football is meant to be about fair competition, but it isn't. The fact that some people have this attitude that bigger clubs should be somehow given a shore-up against smaller clubs being able to de-rail them on a certain path to yet another pot of gold, stinks to high-heaven to me. It's not what I enjoy football for and not what football leagues were devised for. That Victorian chap who proposed the idea would have thrown his application papers in the basket had he known. Everything should be a equal as it possibly can be, otherwise competition stagnates and people eventually lose interest. These people who want the dice loaded should remember that most fans support teams that ultimately lose. There is only a small percentage of fans where the club ultimately succeeds.
You've all been reading too much dystopian sci-fi, talking like people don't have a voice in the world of capitalism, but they do. The FA wouldn't turn the PL or the Football League into the joke of a system they have in American football, they are too stubborn and too far steeped in tradition. People wouldn't stand for it anyway, your talking like we are living in some kind of creepy dark future where everything is decided for us, yes these things do come true but they are also challenged, don't expect something like that to go completely unchallenged, no matter how much the far east pays for it.
Sam Do you think that the FA is more powerful than the Premier League? I think that the PL always seems to come out best whenever they have had a run in over the last few seasons.
The PL as a whole will not vote for any major changes...why would clubs like us, Swansea, etc vote for the top clubs to break away. The only way this could happen is if a European Super League was set up and the top 4-6 clubs left. They would have to resign from the PL which would not be popular with fans as they would have to reconcile themselves to teams like Barcelona/Madrid as their rivals rather than the other English sides. The PL and FL would then sort it out and carry on as usual though probably with a reduced Sky deal. Not saying it couldn't happen, but there is nothing inevitable about it.
Fran I think any breakaway would stem from the "larger" clubs wanting a bigger slice of the cake from any future SKY deal. They would regotiate the contract and I suppose a new league would be formed for the benefit of these clubs. A similar restructuring has happened in Scottish football this season and it has gone through despite the anger of many of the clubs in Scotland. I don't think that it would happen as you suggest with teams asking to vote on the proposal but a substantial TV deal might prompt larger clubs to be invited to a restructured league. I would imagine that TV execs might look at it from the perspective of inviting those clubs who could garner the largest audiences abroad dictating who would be involved in the competiton. There have been some good articles that I have read of late which have pushed the notion that the "traditional" fan like Second Stain lauds will have less and less say in the way English football is presented. If you out yourself in the shoes of teams like Arsenal, Liverpool and the Manchester clubs they are increasingly investing in the best players in the world and are having to look abroad for investment to sustain the extremely high standards that they have now set themselves. This model can't be sustained domestically and the interest in the game in the Middle and Far East is unlikely not to impact itself on the domestic game as this will form the principle audience and consumer for the sport. I would suggest the numerically, the majority of fans for the glamourous clubs will significantly hail from Asia. Last week I read about how Man Utd are targeting sponsors on an almost national basis (i.e. national telephone companies, etc) as they see this as a way of maximising revenue. This is opposed to looking at global companies where the potential for return is limited due to the relatively few enterprises of this nature. They believe that their marketing strategy has only just started and expect it to manage to reduce the substantial interest payments they have to make. If you are a sponsor it will obviously be better if Man Utd play larger clubs where there will be more interest. (i.e. there will be interest for two teams whereas someone like Swansea are unlikely to have a substantial foriegn following. ) Sponsors will want to maximise return and therefore will want a league where clubs that do not reflect their interest will be squeezed out. I appreciate that this is the polar opposite to what English fans want and is totally contrary to the culture of the game in the UK yet the comment about "bigger teams should be playing in the bigger leagues" may seem humourous in 2013 whereas i don't doubt that this is where it will all end up.
