Football League : Play-Offs
Apr 25, 2003
Congratulations then to the Football League. Just when you thought it was safe to visit your local football ground out pops another delightful series of suggestions from the smart businessmen that run our National Game.
So they are now proposing that six teams will be involved in a much more complicated play-off structure. This, we are told, is designed to improve the chances of the teams that finish higher in the division of getting promoted through the play-offs. I just wonder how many monkeys and how many typewriters it took to come up with that idea?
I’ve got a radical solution. Why not automatically promote the team who comes third thus rewarding their consistency over the whole season; rather than their ability to produce in cup matches? No, is that too radical?
Let’s look at the current division two table. Under the current proposals everyone down to Luton Town would be eligible for a play-off place. Luton, who have 16 points less than Bristol City could get promoted. Why bother with tables at all? Why not simply play through the season and then randomly pick six team to play-off for the promotion spot?
I agree that the proposals will make fewer games irrelevant as a season progresses and therefore make the Nationwide League more appealing as a “product”. It will, I am sure, be more profitable for all concerned but it’s fundamentally wrong.
The play-offs were wrong in the first place and undermine the whole point of a League Structure. To allow more teams to get involved simply compounds the error. Undoubtedly it will happen even if 85-90% of fans are against it because, as we know, fan opinion counts for nothing in football.
The other proposals are equally strange. Wage capping, against turnover, is an interesting theory but I am not sure how this can practically work. Surely, with the turnover of some teams being pretty small, you are going to end up with a squad of players on minimum wage? And what percentage are we talking about, 30%, 80%, 95%?
Perhaps, and here is another radical proposal, we should look at who we let run our football clubs in the first place, strengthen the financial reporting requirements at football clubs, balance out the funding that comes into football so that the rich stop getting richer and the poor go to the wall?
Finally we come to the “administration punishment”. Following Leicester Cities very amusing rule bending this season the rest of the football league has got their knickers in a twist and decided that administration is just some kind of rule dodge. To be honest most of them are probably annoyed that they didn’t think of it first!
The point is administration is a vital way of keeping companies alive whilst they get their house in order. If the people that ran the football league had been a bit sharper when negotiating their television contract with ITV Digital then perhaps administration would not be so frequent over the last two seasons?
Again this seems to be designed to punish the financial weak. The rules won’t be applied to Leicester City but the Football League will probably wait until a smaller, less well-known, less well-supported club needs to go into administration to apply the rules.
So what does a club in financial peril do if they are afraid to go into administration? Declare bankruptcy? I do not know. I am no expert in financial matters – just ask my bank manager.
I do feel that this is some kind of conspiracy against the small club designed to reduce the League down to a more manageable number of professional clubs. So that the “product” is made up of “big brands” and the less fashionable clubs can remain in their second and third division ghetto’s whilst the “big boys” get on with forming the Premiership 2.
And you can guarantee that when the new play-off rules come in Brentford will finish third and lose in the play-offs to the team that came eighth! In the ensuing chaos we will go into administration and be punished by relegation to Division 3, thus becoming the first team in history to come third and be relegated. Obviously this could never really happen?
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