I think it would be an absolute disgrace if Watford were to get to the Premier League, cheating ****s. Hope they miss out on it this season and Football League introduces rules to close their loop hole. Absolutely appalling and should have been banned mid season with a points deduction.
Tell you what Marko, if we get some link up with a good top foreign team, Spanish, Italian, German or Dutch, I thnk we would do exactly the same. Bringing in Di Matteo on good wages if he links us with, say, Lazio, could be a really cheap way of going up. Bringing in McDermott on big wages and having no links means we are exactly where we currently are. So, if the basis was to bring in a manager who has great links to a top (or more than one) European team, who should our next manager be?
Is having a massive and bottomless wallet ok? I think it is a better way than just buying up everyone you can get your hands on just because you can
I think it's a method of tiny piss poor excuses for tin pot clubs to get hold of players without having to pay for them, therefore having a better team than their circumstances would normally allow. Clubs like Watford in the Premier League make the league less competitive and just feed the status quo of dominant untouchable teams at the top.
To be honest, Watford probably aren't big enough for the Pemiership, but then again, neither were/are Leeds - think the Watford way of loan signings is much better than the Leeds way of over-achieving with borrowed money you can't pay back
Leeds are and always have been big enough for the Premier League. You're talking about the Champion's League. Watford won't ever have a sniff of the Champion's League. They might get lucky and reach the Europa League like Wigan inevitably will this season through some purely spawny circumstances. Can't even sell out their Wembley allocation and are still probably going to make it into Europe. I'll die a little inside if they do. Please beat them in the semi's I'd rather see Millwall in Europe than pissing Wigan. At least you've got some fans to enjoy the whole experience, even if you will only take 30 away.
Clubs get where they are on merit - I don't agree with the way Watford have done it, but it's in the rules. And I don't see why you should have a go at Wigan - so they don't have as many fans as us, or you don't think they're as passionate - valid points, but football would be incredibly boring if it was all about who had the biggest fanbase. The fact that teams like Wigan can reach europe without needing to spend billions and billions of pounds is great. They continually survive season upon season with a budget much, much lower than their competitors, so I think they should be applauded for their efforts.
Leeds are nowhere near big enough these days - your average attendance would put you about 18th. QPR have spent £200M trying to get to and stay in the Prem - Leeds could not afford to spend £200K. 20 years ago maybe, but these days Leeds are in about the right position for their size which is mid to bottom of the Championship
Yet their being in the Premier League just feeds the big clubs at the top year on year because clubs like Wigan can't even come close to competing and you end up with an even bigger gap between the top and the bottom.
QPR have not spent £200 million getting to the Premier League and staying there. Prove it. And what are you basing that on? What makes you think that attendances wouldn't drastically improve if we were in the Premier League? We'd be somewhere around 7th or 8th on attendances because we'd be selling out every week no problem. Our turnover in the Championship is £30 million consistently, so that would put us up somewhere around the £90 million mark. That puts spending £60 million a season on transfer fees and wages in a relatively realistic frame. You cannot be seriously implying that QPR are better equipped to compete in the Premier League than Leeds would be? Getting there would mean that the changes that need to be made to the way the club is run would have been made, and QPR aren't exactly a good example of a club "getting it right" in the Premier League.
Marco - 20 years ago Leeds were the 5th best supported club in the country - that's a long time in football. Now you are the 8th best supported club in the Championship. Who do you think were the 5th best supported club in the country 55 years ago?
So the football fans census in 2008 that put us at the 6th best supported team in England, despite being in League One at the time means less than the attendance stats that you've failed to take everything into account on?
a census If you asked 100 men what was more painful, what percentage would say man-flu over childbirth?
Marko, It is not where we come from or where we should be that defines us, it is where we are now and who we are now. Same with football clubs, it is where we are now that defines us as a club. Leeds, at the present time, are a mid-table championship side, with not a lot of spare money to throw about, with the possibility, if and when they ever get back in the Premier League, of being able to generate large crowds from the surrounding areas. However you have to look at the realities of the here and now. There are clubs in the Championship that have access to parachute payments after having been relegated from the Premier league, and these clubs have an advantage - at the present time - over clubs who do not wish to extend themselves financially, in order to reach the Holy Grail of the Premier League. So looking at this league, off the top of my head, Crystal Palace Brighton Derby Charlton Sheff Wed Millwall Leeds Barnsley Huddersfield Peterboro Bristol City are the only clubs that are not in receipt of PP or do not have major financial backing.......which leaves another 14 CLUBS that do. So to even reach the play offs, let alone automatic promotion, would take an incredible effort/stroke of luck...so any growth in the strength of these clubs will have to be slow and organic, maybe five / six years... this is reality
Its bollocks is what it is, reality doesn't come into your argument. You haven't considered the depth of the parachute payment situation. Those clubs aren't given parachute payments so they can get back into the premier league easier, they are given them to stop them from going bust on account of no longer getting 50 million a season. The payments purpose is to cover the clubs outgoings, which are massively inflated on account of having been in the premier league. The fact that only 3 clubs of the last 15 to come down have gone straight back up, and after this season that will be 3 from 18, should be enough to prove that parachute payments count for nothing in terms of actual spending power. Leeds is as good an example as any of how having money doesn't necessarily mean spending power if its all tied up servicing debt and outgoings. You seem to have overlooked that Leeds makes more money than the majority of clubs in the championship, if not all of them, including those on parachute payments. THAT is reality.
