Foreign owners 'want end to Premier League relegation'

[Danny-Boy]

If they want to turn it into a complete joke of a division then so be it. You can just imagine it gets down to the last few games of the season and the bottom teams no longer give a shit and start concentrating on next season by testing out a few fringe players, cue regular results like:

Man Utd 6-0 Wigan
Chelsea 8-1 WBA

etc..

The relegation battles are often far more exciting than the top spots.

This! Who can forget what happened last season and in 2004/5? But this Premiership claptrap has been propagated on BBC for years, it's like top-level football didn't exist before 1992/93. Though strangely no-one points out that Lineker never scored a goal in the Premiership...

 

[hans kraay fan club]

I thought your point was going up and staying up.

It was.

Which is why Wigan is actually the correct answer, rather than Bradford, Hull, Blackpool or Burnley. They all got there though, on no more than competitive budgets. There are 15 teams outside the Prem, with a CHANCE of making it to the top table. All they need is the right set of circumstance - a decent manager, one golden year from a centre forward, etc.

 

[Garry Nelson's Left Foot]

What would happen with the European places? Who decides how they are implemented? Is it the F.A? Could the F.A say that if the premier league did vote to change itself into a sealed league then none of the teams would be able to qualify for Europe and none of the players playing in it would be eligible to represent England? That would stuff things up for the greedy bastards.

 

[Shooting Star]

As many have mentioned, the only way it works in the USA is because they have a culture of 'no relegation' and therefore their whole sporting system (from high school to the top) is geared around this. In the NFL, there are salary caps and principally the draft to ensure competition. And it works. A closed shop Premier League would have to have a draft to ensure competition, and a draft would never work here for our football, unless we had an overhaul of our educational system. Even then, footballers and NFL players differ. You can be 16/17 here and be ready to play in the Premier league due to your skill, whereas in the NFL this just isn't plausible as they'd be undersized. The most they do is skip a year of college if they enter the NFL early, where here it could quite plausibly be anywhere between 1-8 years of education depending on the level of education for a draft.

It's an absolutely ludicrous idea. The fans would not have it. The only thing I'd fear as the mass number of plastic supporters of the top Premier League teams who frankly wouldn't care as long as their team are winning. Still, I'd like to think I have faith in the majority of supporters who'd be fervently against any sort of idea of this.

 

[Austrian Gull]

All sounds a bit reminiscent of the Premier League 2 idea of a few years ago.

Gillingham happened to be in the Championship at the time and Scally was all for the idea. I wonder what he thinks about it now?

I would imagine this is being fired by Gartside of Bolton.

 

[Gritt23]

The draft isn't anything to do with 'no relegation' though, is it?

No it isn't, but what it does do is ensure the League stays fresh despite there being no relegation. You don't slip to the bottom and stay there because there is no prospect of ever getting back to the top.

Promotion and relegation plays it's part in freshening up the Premier League every year, and without it, you would ust have the same old teams, finishing in roughly teh same places, and the majority of it doing so without much of a care.

That isn't the case in teh NFL because of teh draft ... and that teams must spend a minimum % of their income on wages, so they have to spend to try and become competitive, rather than just sit on their money, coining it in every year regardless of where they finish.

 

[Alex Alex Dawson oo! oo!]

I've never once heard such a suggestion being attributed to Whelan, who has always seemed a decent chairman and general footal man, to me. I be very saddened if this were true. (I don't think it is).

Tbh I can't find anything that backs me up on Whelan, guess I got him confused with Gartside.

 

[Husty]

I doubt teams like Wigan/Bolton would ever vote it through, because if it did go through, surely they'd just pick the 20 biggest teams anyway, so teams like Leeds, Derby, Wednesday and Forest would all be invited up, with teams like Wigan, Bolton, Swansea, Norwich all given their marching orders.

 

[Gary Leeds]

That will never happen but what is more than likely is the premiership being split into 2 leagues of 10 teams with a one up/one down between PL1 and PL2 via a series of playoff matches biased towards the team in PL1, and PL2 and Championship which would then remove all chance of the likes of Wigan, Bolton, Leeds, Southampton and us of ever making PL1 but would allow the Premierleague to maintain their place at the top of the pyramid and therefore keep their European slots.

The PL know there is no chance of their original plan going through but there is every chance of the 10/10 split happening and they will probably offer that as the only alternative to no promotion to the PL

 

[Brovion]

While I'd rather have been wrong, I predicted this would be rearing its head very shortly on the Liverpool TV thread a few days ago.

In a sense, it's obvious they would try. That's how it is in the NFL/NBA/MLB, same teams every year, no fears of relegation which helps budgeting. To football people this is anathema, but even here rugby seem to have a very different view to football on this issue.

You can only assume the only thing stopping the likes of Bolton/Wigan voting for it is that they know they would be slaughtered and accused of killing the game. To be fair, some may even have a principled objection to it but I can definitely see 14 clubs voting for this at some point out of greed and self-interest/preservation.

The difference is they work on a Franchise system where the leagues go out of their way to help the 'worse' clubs at the expense of the 'best' clubs. All are theoretically equal as the leagues know that that's what keeps fans interested. In the NFL the team with the worse playing record gets the pick of the best new players and power moves from team to team in cycles. In baseball, teams don't even get to keep all their sponsorship income.

You just know that won't happen in England (especially if Liverpool get their way). There will be no sense of equality, it'll still be every man for himself. The whole thing will be as exciting as the old-style one-division county cricket championship. Less exciting in fact, because we'll know who'll win and we know the losers can't get relegated, so what'll be the point?

 

[withdeanwombat]

Could there not be a call for re-election to the Premiership ? You know,where Barnsley win the Championship and don't get voted in,but if Leeds or West Ham win it and Wigan finish bottom they get the votes to go up ? This is just football Darwinism.Eventually the "big " clubs will not be happy playing West Brom,Fulham,Stoke,Sunderland etc twice each per season and will switch to a Euroleague involving the "big " clubs from Spain.Portugal,Italy,Germany,France,perhaps even Scotland.

The Sky is really the limit.

 

[Cadiz Seagull]

There's another reason the draft system works in the States and that's because American Football is basically a one country game. So if you are a star player you either go to a lower club if you are drafted or you go and get a proper job.

Imagine Rooney being told he'd got to go and play for the club that finished at the bottom of the league. He'd be off to Europe before you could say whatever it is that doesn't take very long to say.

 

[bhaexpress]

I think you'll find that most Premiership teams would prefer Sunderland, Middlesboorgh, Leeds and Derby than QPR, Bolton, Wigan or Blackburn let alone ne'er do wells like us for the simple reason the former have a lot more pulling power. I can't see to many being thrilled about have Swansea as against West Ham for that matter either. I think it's safe to say that the bigger clubs would rather have 18 teams in the Premier to give their poor little overpaid darlings more time to recover from the excesses of playing European games and night clubbing.

 

[bhaexpress]

There's another reason the draft system works in the States and that's because American Football is basically a one country game. So if you are a star player you either go to a lower club if you are drafted or you go and get a proper job.

Imagine Rooney being told he'd got to go and play for the club that finished at the bottom of the league. He'd be off to Europe before you could say whatever it is that doesn't take very long to say.

The prime reason why the draft sort of works is that no other country has an education system that promotes sports to a professional level in order to subsidise the colleges themselves. Their collegiate system is more of an industry than an education system and the draft would be completely unworkable in any other country.

 

[hans kraay fan club]

I think you'll find that most Premiership teams would prefer Sunderland, Middlesboorgh, Leeds and Derby than QPR, Bolton, Wigan or Blackburn let alone ne'er do wells like us for the simple reason the former have a lot more pulling power. I can't see to many being thrilled about have Swansea as against West Ham for that matter either. I think it's safe to say that the bigger clubs would rather have 18 teams in the Premier to give their poor little overpaid darlings more time to recover from the excesses of playing European games and night clubbing.

Agree with your sentiments. You appear though, to have mistakenly typed the word 'Middlesborough' on your list of 'clubs with pulling power'.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

The Wigans, the Boltons, the Fulhams etc. are the current cannon fodder. There has to be a mechanism for recruiting new cannon fodder and ditching old cannon fodder. As things stand we may take up that role sometime in the next few years. Doubt we are likely to attain the role of Major Money Launderers For Foreign Dodgy Geezers anytime soon.

Hoorah

 

[seagullsovergrimsby]

There's another reason the draft system works in the States and that's because American Football is basically a one country game. So if you are a star player you either go to a lower club if you are drafted or you go and get a proper job.

Imagine Rooney being told he'd got to go and play for the club that finished at the bottom of the league. He'd be off to Europe before you could say whatever it is that doesn't take very long to say.

In the NFL the star players that get drafted to a struggling team normally get traded and end up with a top team. An exceptional player will be traded for 2 or 3 lower draft pick players.

 

[Seagull on the wing]

Maybe it's what it needs to bring the Premier League and their selfishness to an end, let's face it who would want to watch Wolves v Swansea on TV ? Once that happens then the TV deals will be a free for all and the smaller clubs will be f***ed as it will be nonstop Man U, Chelsea , Man City.

It is now is'nt it Ernest!!

 

[Samej]

For FUCKS Sake!

BBC Sport - Foreign owners 'want end to Premier League relegation'


Several foreign-owned Premier League clubs want to scrap relegation, according to League Managers Association chief Richard Bevan.

If more clubs are sold to foreigner investors, they may have enough votes to force through the change.

But Bevan hopes that a government-led inquiry can help prevent the proposal.

"We're very keen that the report is successful in helping the Football Association introduce a licensing programme for clubs," he said.

"Because there are a number of overseas-owned clubs already talking about bringing about the avoidance of promotion and relegation in the Premier League.

"If we have four or five more new owners, that could happen."

More to follow.

Best we get promoted pretty quick then

 

[Gwylan]

What would happen with the European places? Who decides how they are implemented? Is it the F.A? Could the F.A say that if the premier league did vote to change itself into a sealed league then none of the teams would be able to qualify for Europe and none of the players playing in it would be eligible to represent England? That would stuff things up for the greedy bastards.

That was my immediate thought too. If the PL took itself outside the FA's football pyramid then it would also be outside UEFA and not able to play in the CL. Not sure whether they'd be able to play for England or not but that could also be a possibility.

Mind you that would please the likes of Taggart and Wenger who are always moaning about their players in internationals.

It's a truly terrible idea and one that I suspect will never see the light of day - this is just kite-flying.

I genuinely can see a European Super League though - sooner rather than later