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Sometimes you get the feeling football’s rule-makers want change for change’s sake.
Each time the top brass of the Premier League or Football League get together, another crackpot scheme is debated over a snifter of brandy, often in some warm foreign location.
Very few ideas make it past the discussion stage, let alone a vote. Getting a mandate from 72 owners of all shapes, sizes and backgrounds is no mean feat.
Yet the latest plans to reshuffle the Football League from three to four divisions, admitting an extra eight clubs and reducing league sizes to 20 teams in each tier seems to have some traction.
Reducing or eliminating midweek games is an appealing prospect. Crowds are often reduced and for all its fancy logarithms, the fixture computer doesn’t seem to be able to get its circuit board around the geographical notion Bolton is nowhere near Charlton, Millwall, or Ipswich and so shouldn’t schedule a game there on a Tuesday night.
Costs to clubs are an important factor too. Wanderers experienced what life is like living on a hand-to-mouth budget at the turn of the year when travel was a coach on the day and overnight accommodation was not an option; they didn’t care for it much but many other clubs have no other option.
A reduction in midweek travel would be a bonus, albeit one cancelled out entirely by the four home games each club would lose.
My suggestion to combat this is simple. Go back to 1958.
Wanderers fans need no reminder this was a fine year for football. Nat Lofthouse lifted the FA Cup and Bolton’s stock was as high as it ever has been. Elsewhere in the game, however, the old Third Division North and South had been officially abandoned and the new Fourth Division was formed.
The economical reasons for regionalising the lower leagues were no longer as important as they had been in the war years, and attendances were booming again.
But nearly 60 years on things have come a full circle. Locally, I see clubs like Accrington, Oldham, Rochdale or Bury struggling to get the punters in and wonder whether the current system actually is daring them to fail by making fans travel up and down the land every other week?
By regionalising the lower two divisions, maintaining the current League One and Championship and also giving some incentive to clubs to make money in the Football League Trophy, I could see fewer clubs hitting the wall.
Wanderers have sampled life on the other side and yearn to return to a time when staying in the Hilton and hiring out entire first-class carriages on the next train back from Euston was just par for the course.
But right now they are in the muck and nettles with the Scunthorpes, the Southends and the Fleetwoods, and it would be nice to think they could make a difference, and speak up for the little guys.
Dean Holdsworth has got his hands dirty at Newport and Aldershot and knows the pitfalls faced by clubs who live from month to month and I’m hopeful he can help repair the relationship Wanderers have with the wider footballing world.
Phil Gartside was once charged with drafting a paper to hand out among the chairmen and chief executives at an AGM – one that as I recall caused somewhat of a stink.
The controversial Premier League Two plan was, in truth, meant to be nothing more than a coffee table debate. It had serious aspects, and Gartside was ever-conscious of the financial perils which lay ahead for teams who toppled out of the top flight and into the uncertain world of the Championship.
His suggestion was to close the shop, to have promotion and relegation limited to those who could fulfil certain financial criteria. Needless to say, the clubs on the other side of the fence – which at the time included the likes of Sheffield Wednesday, Leicester City, Leeds United and Southampton – were none too impressed.
He actually unveiled his plan several months earlier in this very newspaper, although at that point we had no idea it was anything other than the chairman thinking out loud as an accountant.
Years on, and after all the fallout at Wanderers, Gartside’s point was proved. His own club could not carry the infrastructure they had built over a decade in the Premier League without the massive TV and sponsorship monies, and a failure to rebuild – also on his watch – saw them sink out of sight.
There is a duty to protect this Football League for it really is unique in the world game. Perhaps it is time we start looking after the little guys, rather than worrying about how quickly we can climb the branches back towards the promised land of the Premier League?
Source
Each time the top brass of the Premier League or Football League get together, another crackpot scheme is debated over a snifter of brandy, often in some warm foreign location.
Very few ideas make it past the discussion stage, let alone a vote. Getting a mandate from 72 owners of all shapes, sizes and backgrounds is no mean feat.
Yet the latest plans to reshuffle the Football League from three to four divisions, admitting an extra eight clubs and reducing league sizes to 20 teams in each tier seems to have some traction.
Reducing or eliminating midweek games is an appealing prospect. Crowds are often reduced and for all its fancy logarithms, the fixture computer doesn’t seem to be able to get its circuit board around the geographical notion Bolton is nowhere near Charlton, Millwall, or Ipswich and so shouldn’t schedule a game there on a Tuesday night.
Costs to clubs are an important factor too. Wanderers experienced what life is like living on a hand-to-mouth budget at the turn of the year when travel was a coach on the day and overnight accommodation was not an option; they didn’t care for it much but many other clubs have no other option.
A reduction in midweek travel would be a bonus, albeit one cancelled out entirely by the four home games each club would lose.
My suggestion to combat this is simple. Go back to 1958.
Wanderers fans need no reminder this was a fine year for football. Nat Lofthouse lifted the FA Cup and Bolton’s stock was as high as it ever has been. Elsewhere in the game, however, the old Third Division North and South had been officially abandoned and the new Fourth Division was formed.
The economical reasons for regionalising the lower leagues were no longer as important as they had been in the war years, and attendances were booming again.
But nearly 60 years on things have come a full circle. Locally, I see clubs like Accrington, Oldham, Rochdale or Bury struggling to get the punters in and wonder whether the current system actually is daring them to fail by making fans travel up and down the land every other week?
By regionalising the lower two divisions, maintaining the current League One and Championship and also giving some incentive to clubs to make money in the Football League Trophy, I could see fewer clubs hitting the wall.
Wanderers have sampled life on the other side and yearn to return to a time when staying in the Hilton and hiring out entire first-class carriages on the next train back from Euston was just par for the course.
But right now they are in the muck and nettles with the Scunthorpes, the Southends and the Fleetwoods, and it would be nice to think they could make a difference, and speak up for the little guys.
Dean Holdsworth has got his hands dirty at Newport and Aldershot and knows the pitfalls faced by clubs who live from month to month and I’m hopeful he can help repair the relationship Wanderers have with the wider footballing world.
Phil Gartside was once charged with drafting a paper to hand out among the chairmen and chief executives at an AGM – one that as I recall caused somewhat of a stink.
The controversial Premier League Two plan was, in truth, meant to be nothing more than a coffee table debate. It had serious aspects, and Gartside was ever-conscious of the financial perils which lay ahead for teams who toppled out of the top flight and into the uncertain world of the Championship.
His suggestion was to close the shop, to have promotion and relegation limited to those who could fulfil certain financial criteria. Needless to say, the clubs on the other side of the fence – which at the time included the likes of Sheffield Wednesday, Leicester City, Leeds United and Southampton – were none too impressed.
He actually unveiled his plan several months earlier in this very newspaper, although at that point we had no idea it was anything other than the chairman thinking out loud as an accountant.
Years on, and after all the fallout at Wanderers, Gartside’s point was proved. His own club could not carry the infrastructure they had built over a decade in the Premier League without the massive TV and sponsorship monies, and a failure to rebuild – also on his watch – saw them sink out of sight.
There is a duty to protect this Football League for it really is unique in the world game. Perhaps it is time we start looking after the little guys, rather than worrying about how quickly we can climb the branches back towards the promised land of the Premier League?
Source
