QPR chief exec on 'no relegation' - utter disgrace

[Ernest]

Wouldn't be surprised if sooner rather than later Premiership 2 came into being, 16 team premiership 1 and 20 team premiership 2. Would make Premiership 1 more competitive and get rid of deadwood fixtures like Bolton v Swansea and with the TV money filtering into Premiership 2 would make that even more of a fight to get promoted into the top league which the TV would love.

Of course we would be now in poll position to be a part of it.

 

[Deleted member 18477]

I honestly mean this. If this ever happened I would stop watching The Albion.

The whole point of football is to score more goals than the other team, to then win the match, to then gain points, to then be promoted. Thats the WHOLE point of playing the match.

I couldn't watch a game if, ultimately, you couldn't achieve the whole point of the match itself.

You'd score a goal and just think 'oh, well that's nice'

exactly! i'd find another sport i think, or take up golf.

 

[Gritt23]

Surely the Premiership realise that more often than not, the fight for survival at the bottom end of the table is far more exciting than the battle of the mega-rich at the top, fighting to notch up ANOTHER title.

Without relegation, I think I'd have hardly watched a Premiership game over the last 5 years. The odd battle of the giants at the top is interesting, but in truth if Man City don't win it this year, they'll be up there fighting to win again next year. Whereas if Wigan lose their battle for survival, that could be it for them in the Premiership, they may NEVER get back. That is exciting, and if the Premiership ever lose sight of it to the point of letting the turkeys vote on whether to ban Christmas, then more fool them. They may save a few turkeys but they will be killing teh goose that lays the golden eggs.

 

[kevo]

The CE of QPR should be careful what he wishes for.

I wonder if he may possibly change his mind if QPR are relegated and this comes into force while they're outside the Premier League? Hmmmm.

 

[pasty]

I wonder if he may possibly change his mind if QPR are relegated and this comes into force while they're outside the Premier League? Hmmmm.

In about 3 or 4 weeks time you mean - bet your arse he will the

 

[jackalbion]

most of the big managers are against like sir alex, wenger, dalgleish

 

[withdeanwombat]

And the then permanent members of the Premiership could play each other constantly when the upper echelon clubs exit for the European Superleague.

The Championship would surely welcome with open arms the abandoned rump of lesser Premiership clubs who I think we could all list,and would not be bothered if they never set foot on the Amex anytime soon thereafter.

 

[Badger]

most of the big managers are against like sir alex, wenger, dalgleish

You mean managers from teams that have never even been close to being relegated from The Premier League? (In Sky Sports speak, remember there was no top division before 1992).

 

[Tooting Gull]

That is exciting, and if the Premiership ever lose sight of it to the point of letting the turkeys vote on whether to ban Christmas, then more fool them. They may save a few turkeys but they will be killing teh goose that lays the golden eggs.

Excellent mixed bird metaphors. I'd rather be a Seagull than a turkey or a goose.

 

[Albion Rob]

The CE of QPR should be careful what he wishes for. If - and it's a big if, IMHO - the big clibs did decide to get together and have a top league of twenty clubs, with no relegation, then you can bet that they would also vote on which twenty "big name" clubs they would want to have in that league........and QPR wouldn't be one of them!

Agree with this. If the vote went through it wouldn't necessarily mean the bums on the seats would remain the same. I'd guess at a 20 team league comprising:

ManUre
Citeh
Arsenal
Liverpool
Spurs
Newcastle
Chelsea
Leeds
Everton
Southampton
Norwich
Sunderland
Cardiff or Swansea
Villa
Wolves
Forest
West Ham
Sheffield United
West Brom
Stoke or Leicester

I guess the Albion could get in based on the fact we have a large catchment area but basically I guess it would become like the NFL where if you wanted to watch the gold star event you'd have to align yourself with one of these clubs.

And then I guess if it wasn't working out for one of these clubs (maybe Leicester or Stoke or someone) then they could be voted out and someone could replace them. Or, of course, we could see franchises become more common....

 

[Gritt23]

Excellent mixed bird metaphors. I'd rather be a Seagull than a turkey or a goose.

I was in danger of getting quite carried away, with that, but someone would have called fowl, then probably had me tarred and feathered.


Honestly, once I start ......

 

[34064 Fighter Command]

No relegation = No promotion = No competition = No championship = No points for a win = No point in winning = No point turning up.

If this were to happen you can gaurentee a Kerry Packer ' World Series Cricket ' style fracture of the game. I'd almost certainly expect most English non-premier league clubs to refer this to UEFA if not the EU as being against competition law as it effectively restricts their right to trade.

 

[JBizzle]

From his position its a perfectly logical thing to say as I would expect any chariman of a "yo-yo" club to say the same if they were in the Prem that year. From footballs position, its ridiculous, stupid and fundamentally a flawed idea that would ruin the competitive nature of football and possibly kill off the Premier League. Yes, we're told thats its all about Europe but relegation battles are more interesting these days than title races!

Imagine how bored you'd be if you finished 18th each and every year forever without the means to push up the league or the incentive to stay up?

 

[BLOCK F]

Have to agree with most of the comments made so far regarding the sterility of football if there was no relegation.However the poster who made the point about 'a throw away off the cuff remark',made by the Chief Exec. could be right.
Not particularly relevant, but perhaps the journey to the top is more satisfying and exciting than arriving and constantly battling against relegation.Seem to remember I enjoyed the battle up the leagues in the glory days of the 70's rather more than many of the games in the old 1st div. with lower crowds too.Having said that,as an onlooker,the relegation battles in the Prem are of far more interest to me than the squabble between the almost inevitable names that fight for the top spot year after year!

 

[Waynflete]

Martin Samuel wrote an interesting article a while back about which teams would be in a fixed top flight... no place for Bolton.

MARTIN SAMUEL: One problem with your franchise idea, Phil Gartside. No place for Bolton

UPDATED: 10:29, 10 November 2009

Phil Gartside, the chairman of Bolton, had a bad idea; then he had a worse one. He started by suggesting Rangers and Celtic should join a new two-tier Premier League. Then he went back to the drawing board and returned with the same plan, only as a closed shop. No relegation from tier two.

A licence to be lousy, in other words. It would no longer matter how poor your team became, how hopeless your leadership, because you could never go down. It would turn English club football from a merit system to a franchise system overnight.
Yet Gartside has one problem. Why would anyone want Bolton in this package?

Gartside may think it is a simple case of pulling up the ladder after the 38th club and then parachuting in two from Glasgow, but he is talking about a revolution that would shape English football for decades.

Franchised sport is not random, but meticulously constructed. It cannot be right that Leeds are shut out and Barnsley admitted, just because at one peculiar moment in time their traditional standings are reversed.

Franchises are hand-picked, often on a geographical basis, and with two teams in Manchester certain to be selected, plus others to the north in Lancashire, would Bolton not be redundant in his brave new era?

Start at the top. Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal form the elite, with Rangers and Celtic.

Then the biggest of the also rans: Manchester City, Aston Villa, Tottenham, Everton, Newcastle, Sunderland, West Ham, Wolverhampton, Stoke, Blackburn, Derby and Sheffield United. Each of these teams have been attracting, on average, more than 25,000 fans to their home games this season. Now, with 22 places left, we have to start hand-picking.

Major cities and towns across a geographical spread must have representation, so in come Bristol City, Plymouth, Cardiff and Swansea in the west; Leicester, Coventry and Nottingham Forest in the Midlands; Southampton and Portsmouth in the south; Hull, Norwich and Ipswich in the east; Leeds, Preston North End, Middlesbrough and Blackpool in the north.

This leaves six. There seems to be a large gap between London and Bristol, which could be filled by Reading, while representation in the south of the capital could go to Charlton.

Traditionally passionate derby matches would have to be preserved, too, for the TV audience, affording places for Sheffield Wednesday and Birmingham.

Now there are two. It would seem churlish not to include Fulham, who only fall 212 fans short of the 25,000 benchmark, while Bradford is Britain’s sixth largest urban area, with a population bigger than Liverpool, Manchester or Bristol. These things are important when franchising. Bradford it is, then. Bolton miss out in an already saturated market in the North West. Sorry about that, Phil.

And sorry, too, to Wigan, Burnley, West Bromwich, Queens Park Rangers and all those other clubs who should make our franchised Premier League on merit, but are squeezed out once we allow greed to be the sole qualifying criterion.
This is what Gartside is doing with his new proposal.

He is not a visionary; he does not have what is best for football at heart. He is a frightened man because he sees what can happen to a club that falls out of the Premier League, and he fears it will be Bolton’s turn one day (and maybe this season with many more performances like the one against Aston Villa on Saturday).

He wants to guard against this, to shut the door quickly before it happens and he tosses in the cash bonus of an invite to Rangers and Celtic to sweeten the deal for friends who see only a bottom line.

He fails to comprehend that the only reason his club are even entertained in the top division is because English football rightly exists as a meritocracy, in which it is possible for Bolton to sit at the top table for ever, providing they are good enough, which is exactly as it should be.

Without relegation, without the potential to rise or fall, competitive sport has no meaning.
We curse the way the Champions League has created an elite quartet within our top division, so how would we feel if there was never the possibility of a club such as Wigan rising through four divisions, or Burnley returning to the top after an absence of 33 years?

Not to mention Bolton, who climbed from Division Four in 1988 to the Premier League in 1995, and are perfectly free to remain or go back again, which should concern Gartside considerably more than schemes to seal in the right to be rotten without consequence.