[Football] Premier League - Project Big Picture

[West Hoathly Seagull]

Let 'em ****ing go.

Final nail in the coffin for English football and its great traditions. Shafted by corporations, not even English ones.

Introduce self sustaining wage caps in the lower leagues and walk away. I'd sooner watch Brighton play in the new First Division of the English Football League against Wyecombe Wanderers than see my club bow submissively to these faceless folk on the other side of the pond.

Why don't we just re-name The EPL 'APL' ?

This, with bells and my Whitehawk season ticket on.

Your two posts illustrated most clearly what I was thinking, thus I've quoted them. This is a smack in the mouth to people like Ed Bassford, Paul Whelch and Sarah Watts, whom we've lost in the course of campaigning to keep the Albion going and then get it prospering, along with those still with us such as John Baine, Liz Costa, Paul Samrah, and of course Dick Knight. Perhaps that's going too far, but they almost might as well have formed AFC Brighton and played at the Enclosed Ground or the Dripping Pan the way things are going, along with the whole PPV thing.

I am not a natural Labour supporter (I am a One Nation Tory at heart), but I would love to see Labour get in and introduce a 55% top tax rate, say on earnings above £150,000-200,000., which would cause many of the top players to leave England. That would make the Top Six look good, wouldn't it? If they moved out, I'm sure most people wouldn't miss them.

It will be interesting to see which way Mr Barber votes if this comes to a vote.

 

[ikari2001]

A power grab disguised as charity.

Oh the lower leagues need help? Here’s £250m and a £100m “gift” to the FA? Is this the price of the soul of football? Or were the many millions from the years of the Premier League era just down payments.

I won’t pretend to be an avid watcher of football but I enjoy it when it is the Albion and even England. I like getting behind my team. It is also one of those things I have enjoyed with my dad and friends over the years, starting at the the Withdean.

But this just makes me feel it has been confirmed - for those Suits who run it, it has always been about the money (with a few exceptions I’m sure).

Financial Fair Play was just a weak attempt to make it seem like sport mattered to them. But even that has fallen on its face when truly tested.

Perhaps this is the beginning of the end? Or perhaps like a lot of things since this pandemic began, it is a chance to make a change. Maybe the suits can be made to realise there can be so much more to it than how much more money can be made.

But will things change? Can they change? Or will we all just be happy to go back to “Normal”?

 

[Weststander]

A power grab disguised as charity.

Oh the lower leagues need help? Here’s £250m and a £100m “gift” to the FA? Is this the price of the soul of football? Or were the many millions from the years of the Premier League era just down payments.

I won’t pretend to be an avid watcher of football but I enjoy it when it is the Albion and even England. I like getting behind my team. It is also one of those things I have enjoyed with my dad and friends over the years, starting at the the Withdean.

But this just makes me feel it has been confirmed - for those Suits who run it, it has always been about the money (with a few exceptions I’m sure).

Financial Fair Play was just a weak attempt to make it seem like sport mattered to them. But even that has fallen on its face when truly tested.

Perhaps this is the beginning of the end? Or perhaps like a lot of things since this pandemic began, it is a chance to make a change. Maybe the suits can be made to realise there can be so much more to it than how much more money can be made.

But will things change? Can they change? Or will we all just be happy to go back to “Normal”?

Opportunistic.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

I like the proposed relegation playoff idea.

Premier League relegation. At least 2 clubs automatically relegated annually

Championship promotion: 1st and 2nd automatically promoted.


Club finishing 16th in the Premier League joins four team Championship play-off tournament with teams who finish 3rd, 4th and 5th. Semi-finals would be 16th place PL team vs 5th place Championships team and 3rd place Championship team against 4th place Championship team.

Was scrapped in England after a trial because it rewarded a shit team near the bottom of the table with a smashing day out at Wembley, and money.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

I think I'll reserve my judgement until I have seen what [MENTION=31]El Presidente[/MENTION] has to say about it.

 

[Weststander]

I think I'll reserve my judgement until I have seen what [MENTION=31]El Presidente[/MENTION] has to say about it.

@El Pres will be measured and diplomatic (making no enemies with the clubs).

Not conducive to NSC outrage.

 

[Johnny RoastBeef]

Was scrapped in England after a trial because it rewarded a shit team near the bottom of the table with a smashing day out at Wembley, and money.

This is not the same as in the premiership circa 1993 when there were 22 teams in the league.

In a league of 18 3rd bottom is the equivalent of 15th in the current set up.

Balanced against the current play offs which rewards coming 6th in the Championship with possible promotion.

 

[jessiejames]

Let the top 6 or 7 **** off to a new European league, take sky with them. Conditions are, European league can only buy players from that league, none of those players can play for their Country. We have Divisions 1,2 and 3, and 2 regional division 4. Transfers allowed between any clubs outside of European league, cap on transfer prices, salary capped, FA Cup without European league teams, three up three down from all leagues. Give football back to the fans.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

@El Pres will be measured and diplomatic (making no enemies with the clubs).

Not conducive to NSC outrage.

My gut instinct is to be suspicious. Of course it would suit those deemed above the line to be forever protected in a league from which they cannot be (or are very unlikely to be) relegated.

However I am not one to accept anything on face value, and prefer to be a tedious old bore and examine the facts (if known).

For this proposal to happen the EPL clubs will need to sign up to it using current rules. That means quite a lot of them voting for it. To vote for it they would need to see it as beneficial to them (turkeys don't vote for Christmas). That means more income in the longer term and security of income in the longer term. This means that if the majority support it they see the protected EPL benefitting their club in the long term.

For that to happen the public will need to buy into it, surely? They are the punters paying for the game.

This is where I start getting perplexed. Every post on this thread is against this. If the majority of EPL club fans (not to mention the rest of football's fans) oppose this, how come the majority of EPL clubs have calculated this will be to their benefit? I guess they have calculated that you only need a few million casual viewers on the telly to compensate for the loss of 20-75 thousand passionate paying fans in stadia (we can argue what % in the seats at Old Trafford or The Amex are true fans or part of the wider contingent of casual fans, but that's neither here nor there).

Let's imagine the EPL majority of clubs' (including BHA) calculation is correct. The Albion (if lucky to remain in the EPL) and clubs like Everton and Southampton jettison their die hard fans and get their income from TV, and cater for casual fans only. Is this really going to work?

Not at Brighton if the posts on this thread are representative. We don't have millions of casual fans. Would the millions of casual Liverpool fans tune in to watch them smash us into oblivion? Could the EPL sustain with an elite few who smash up the poorer small clubs every week? Isn't this how the Spanish league works? Is the Spanish league sustainable?

I suppose the bottom line is that if there are millions of casual fans willing to pay to watch 'their' teams on Sky, smashing the likes of us every week, and this is financially stable in the long term, it could 'work' (i.e., be financially viable, like the Spanish league apparently is). Passionate fans like folk on NSC would, of course, walk away. By definition we would be in the minority, like those 'Unite of Manchester' fans who stopped following ManU when the Glazers took over (or earlier?). An 'expendible' minority, by definition, if the EPL clubs' calculations are correct.

Like everone else on NSC I'd hate it. Right now, despite the wealth of Man U, Citeh, Chelsea and Liverpool, we still have a chance. Or do we? Do we really have a chance? Have we ever really had a chance? Has it ever been different?

All through my life there has been a top flight elite. The names have changed (ManU, City, Everton, Liverpool, Leeds, Chelsea, Arsenal, Villa) but it has always been a slowly rotating tiny group of clubs winning the bulk of everything, poaching the best players, with only temporary intrusion by the likes of Forest and Leicester. How much would 'hope' (of trophy success) for Brighton (or Villa or Newcastle, or Palace) be affected by the proposed changes?

I don't know. As a Brighton supporter I'd like to know. As a lover of wider football, I already know - there would be no chance of the likes of Tranmere or Derby County ever reaching the level of the elite again. That said it is not unreasonable for current EPL elite clubs to ask 'what chance do you think you have, realistically, of rising to the top with the current arrangements?'. A tough question to answer honestly.

Hope. Even when Brighton were a perpetual div 3 team when I started going I had hope (that somehow we'd get lucky with players and managers and rise up the divisions). If someone told me Brighton would never ever get out of division 3, I wonder if I'd have started going? What's the point if there is no hope? It looks like the proposals will remove hope from lower tier clubs. Maybe I'm unusual and maybe most folk are happy just to watch their local team come what may. If so there will be little substantial opposition to the proposals (why oppose somethig that doesn't really matter?).

Perhaps for the elite it boils down to a calculation that football on TV does work, even without real crowds. People are tuning in. However this won't work for smaller clubs (especially outside the EPL) if crowds can't return. So EPL clubs could protect themselves by a power grab. In the short term the other clubs will be compensated but in the long term every club below the elite will have to restructure: lose the big salaries (even in tier 3 there are plenty earning multiple tens of thousands of pounds a year; Jamie Moralee was on more than a grand a week with us - twice my salary at the time - in tier 4). That would all have to go.

So I am all for fighting this. But how? Simply not watching the Albion any more isn't the answer.

Boring tedious post over. El Pres will shed the real light on this.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Let the top 6 or 7 **** off to a new European league, take sky with them. Conditions are, European league can only buy players from that league, none of those players can play for their Country. We have Divisions 1,2 and 3, and 2 regional division 4. Transfers allowed between any clubs outside of European league, cap on transfer prices, salary capped, FA Cup without European league teams, three up three down from all leagues. Give football back to the fans.

....set by the EPL.

Who do you imagine has the power to impose your suggestions? I don't disagree with them, in the main, and up to a point, but it would be interesting to see whether folk would bother watching tedious TV games between Everton and Lyon in numbers sufficient to make a Euro leage viable (my guess is not, which is why it hasn't happened already), or even bother going go to their home fixtures. The elite mooted a league in the past but the current CL qualifying rounds (and even round 1 proper) are, I suspect, TV loss leaders. And travelling overseas every week isn't going to be much fun for the players. No away fans, either (other than the very wealthy).

No, a European league seems unlikely to me, unless it is simply a version of the current CL, in which case only 4 or fewer English sides would be in it, which is why the EPL clubs don't want it and wouldn't sign up for it (ManU, City, Liverpool and Chelsea may, but to date they don't own the EPL, so they are stuffed).

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

This is not the same as in the premiership circa 1993 when there were 22 teams in the league.

In a league of 18 3rd bottom is the equivalent of 15th in the current set up.

Balanced against the current play offs which rewards coming 6th in the Championship with possible promotion.

I see your point. That said I feel more comfortable with 3rd to 6th in the league below fighting for the right to benefit from their very good season, than take the team in 3rd and make them play a one off game against the team who escaped automatic relegation by the skin of their teeth.

Anyway....this is a bit of a digression. If the EPL get away with their plans they will do what they like, and any system that potentially protects a team from relegation (the sudden death playoff) will get the nod.

 

[father_and_son]

Opportunistic.

Mercenary?

 

[Weststander]

....set by the EPL.

Who do you imagine has the power to impose your suggestions? I don't disagree with them, in the main, and up to a point, but it would be interesting to see whether folk would bother watching tedious TV games between Everton and Lyon in numbers sufficient to make a Euro leage viable (my guess is not, which is why it hasn't happened already), or even bother going go to their home fixtures. The elite mooted a league in the past but the current CL qualifying rounds (and even round 1 proper) are, I suspect, TV loss leaders. And travelling overseas every week isn't going to be much fun for the players. No away fans, either (other than the very wealthy).

No, a European league seems unlikely to me, unless it is simply a version of the current CL, in which case only 4 or fewer English sides would be in it, which is why the EPL clubs don't want it and wouldn't sign up for it (ManU, City, Liverpool and Chelsea may, but to date they don't own the EPL, so they are stuffed).

I agree.

I really don’t think there’ll ever be a scenario where ManU, ManC etc aren’t in the top division in England (much to the annoyance of many I expect) or Rangers/Celtic not in their domestic league .... that’s been mentioned so often over the years too. Similarly, Barca and RealM will always take La Liga seriously imho.

None of the aforementioned clubs will allow the likes of rivals Aberdeen, Everton or Leicester, Sevilla to scoop all the prestigious and historic domestic trophies ad infinitum, forfeited for the chance to be part of a super European League with just one winner on the continent each season.

Domestic football in England and Germany works well, crowds are fantastic at all levels.

I could be proved wrong, but I see European club football carrying on as just a midweek affair.

 

[jessiejames]

....set by the EPL.

Who do you imagine has the power to impose your suggestions? I don't disagree with them, in the main, and up to a point, but it would be interesting to see whether folk would bother watching tedious TV games between Everton and Lyon in numbers sufficient to make a Euro leage viable (my guess is not, which is why it hasn't happened already), or even bother going go to their home fixtures. The elite mooted a league in the past but the current CL qualifying rounds (and even round 1 proper) are, I suspect, TV loss leaders. And travelling overseas every week isn't going to be much fun for the players. No away fans, either (other than the very wealthy).

No, a European league seems unlikely to me, unless it is simply a version of the current CL, in which case only 4 or fewer English sides would be in it, which is why the EPL clubs don't want it and wouldn't sign up for it (ManU, City, Liverpool and Chelsea may, but to date they don't own the EPL, so they are stuffed).

**** the EPL. If the top 6 or 7 clubs want a European super league let them have it. The Champions league is going to be expanded when the new tv rights are due. I use to love the old European cup, now Champion league, where you don't have to be champions to take part. Sky and the Premier league have ruined football.

 

[beorhthelm]

maybe my miss-reading, but seems this isnt from the Premier League, its from the Football League and a couple of Premier League clubs.

 

[father_and_son]

....set by the EPL.

Who do you imagine has the power to impose your suggestions?

The top6 themselves could under the new rules.

I don't disagree with them, in the main, and up to a point, but it would be interesting to see whether folk would bother watching tedious TV games between Everton and Lyon in numbers sufficient to make a Euro leage viable (my guess is not, which is why it hasn't happened already), or even bother going go to their home fixtures. The elite mooted a league in the past but the current CL qualifying rounds (and even round 1 proper) are, I suspect, TV loss leaders. And travelling overseas every week isn't going to be much fun for the players. No away fans, either (other than the very wealthy).

Don't they keep telling us they have huge fan bases overseas. So ManU fans in Paris will be the away end for PSG v ManU?

No, a European league seems unlikely to me, unless it is simply a version of the current CL, in which case only 4 or fewer English sides would be in it, which is why the EPL clubs don't want it and wouldn't sign up for it (ManU, City, Liverpool and Chelsea may, but to date they don't own the EPL, so they are stuffed).

But this wouldn't be about the Champions League. This would be 'Elite' football. Probably only 12 teams, closed shop and no chance of some Europa League 'nobody' defiling their tournament!

Huge TV audiences as would have massive international appeal (that would be cultivated further by playing games overseas too).

TBH, the only reason I see the top6 wanting their '6 of 9' special movers is so they can create this!

 

[father_and_son]

I think where I stand on this is that if Paul votes for it, he can have our Season Tickets back.

Given where we have come from and the journey to get here to be in any way party to pulling the ladder up after ourselves would negate every positive feeling I have for this club.

It would definitely be game over for me.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

The top6 themselves could under the new rules.


Don't they keep telling us they have huge fan bases overseas. So ManU fans in Paris will be the away end for PSG v ManU?



But this wouldn't be about the Champions League. This would be 'Elite' football. Probably only 12 teams, closed shop and no chance of some Europa League 'nobody' defiling their tournament!

Huge TV audiences as would have massive international appeal (that would be cultivated further by playing games overseas too).

TBH, the only reason I see the top6 wanting their '6 of 9' special movers is so they can create this!

But there won't be new rules unless more than the top 6 agree to make new rules.

Thanks for a considered reply, though.

 

[Baldseagull]

Doe this explain why the likes of Leeds and Villa have been spending like Katie Pride on a shopping spree in a desperate attempt to fireproof themselves for a top 18 spot?

Highly irresponsible to incentivise clubs to spend money they haven't got during Covid when no one knows how long this will go on for.

Having 20 sides gives clubs like us a chance to get a foothold in the division. In future anyone gwtting promoted will have to spend £100 million to have any chance of survival.

Except they will find that harder to do if one of the spending restrictions for promoted teams suggested is applied.

 

[Gwylan]

For this proposal to happen the EPL clubs will need to sign up to it using current rules. That means quite a lot of them voting for it. To vote for it they would need to see it as beneficial to them (turkeys don't vote for Christmas). That means more income in the longer term and security of income in the longer term. This means that if the majority support it they see the protected EPL benefitting their club in the long term.

And what happens in the following season when there's a motion that 90% of the PL income will go to the top nine clubs and the other nine share 10%? The Big Six clubs all vote for the motion and the following season, the rest of the PL have to work out how to pay £90m of wages with an income of £10m.

Any PL club that voted for this, outside the Big Six, would be stark raving bonkers IMO