Posts Tagged ‘Premier League’

The Original Grumpy Old Man: That League We Aspire To Previewed (Not)

Aug 11th, 10 / Comments Off

The last respectable PL player

Today OGOM looks at the PL 2010-11, the so called promised land Leeds United aspire to return to..

What is the point of reviewing the forthcoming PL season? The top 5 are decided, the only question is in what order, the bottom 8 are stick on certainties with all 3 promoted clubs assumed to be yo-yo clubs. The only question left is which of the rest is this seasons Fulham (and it could still be Fulham!). All in the entire product doesn’t change and the money keeps flowing away from the many and into the hands of the few. This reality stinks, it could be so much different, in a parallel universe a series of renewing and spirit rising outcomes would accrue, a small list of which I needlessly articulate below, however you can bet your bottom pound they won’t happen this season.

Anyone can win the League and Cups. 20 clubs start the season with equal ambition, Newcastle United remembers the side it had in the 60’s and 70’s and are aiming to replicate that, Stoke City want to surpass the 1972 League Cup win, David Moyles is looking enviously back at what Howard Kendal achieved at Goodison Park, in style as well as success, and wants some of that. Arsenal will play their first 11 in the League Cup third round. Meanwhile a group of senior pros in Lancashire and North London are worried that the parallels with their clubs early 70’s history suggest relegation is a major threat. With every footballer in the PL believing their skill/energy and commitment levels to be the same regardless of wage levels the games are competitive and close. It is going to be a wonderful season of surprises in this dimension.

The standard of refereeing and sportsmanship will be outstanding. Marvel as we go through a whole season without a referee altering the course of a game with an mind blowing aberration. Equal amounts of penalties will be given at Old Trafford and Anfield to the away sides as the home sides, Howard Webb and others will cut out the theatre and give decisions with understated grace. Players won’t surround the ref, managers won’t berate them at full-time and supporters will just shrug when they don’t like something. Games will be allocated randomly and any of the top 4 division standard officials could get Arsenal v Chelsea in the FA Cup third round. The FA will proudly announce their “common sense” awards whilst also pointing out no-one got booked for celebrating a goal, returning to the field of play or winning the ball. It could almost be like Cricket!

A new era of financial responsibility and shy chairman will be born. Chairman will decide to limit wages for players to 50% of the clubs turnover and that all monies put in by owners, be they foreign or British, count as liabilities. Clubs will volunteer to be part of an early warning system when debt starts to get out of hand, agents won’t be paid by clubs period. The PFA will put the needs of all its membership before a few superstars and John Terry will refuse a wage rise because the figures involve blow his mind enough already its putting him off his game! A moratorium on ticket price increases will be announced and clubs will compete to provide the most attractive value for money family match experience. A refreshing attitude that saves the game.

British footballers will predominate. Football League stadiums bulge with PL scouts and managers as a new craze of buying good British players takes off. Clubs start to put their academies in front of a foreign scouting empire. Sam Allardyce leads the way by declaring Blackburn Rovers are the new Athletic Bilbao and want to have a predominately North West born set of players with 3 seasons. 16/17/18 year olds are told that they are with the club until they are 22 and told they must study for a degree during that time. One minute someone is playing for Blyth Spartans, the next they are joining Sunderland and in the team within weeks. A hundred foreign players depart, with gratitude for the wages, to pastures new leaving behind only real quality and standards.

The powers that be will reunite the English game. After 18 years of selfishness an outbreak of common cause provokes the PL to revoke its “independence” and rejoin with the FL. The divisions revert to their old numbering system of 1, 2, 3, 4 and the Blue Square becomes division 5. Everyone agrees to the over-arching authority of the FA and in return the FA agrees to a new professionalism. The bid for the 2018 World Cup spreads the joy and largess around the country geographically and the divisions. Everyone signs up to a concordat on respect for each other, Bury’s sit with Manchester United’s, AFC Wimbledon with MK Dons and the new motto for English football becomes “the true peoples game”. The age of excess is over.

Chairman, managers and everyone else will come together to ensure that England’s Euro 2012 qualifying campaign has all the chances it can muster (despite the retention of the manager). Sir Alex Ferguson leads the way with a promise to release all players when required, the other 19 managers follow suit by offering to drive their stars to England training camps themselves. Chairmen accept injuries will happen and console themselves with the insurance pay-out. The press calms the hype down and simply asks that the squad do their best, established players accept they competition of others based on their form not whether they go to the same exclusive clubs. David Beckham retires from all football. It is nice to watch qualifying games with an equal amount of hope and realism.

Obviously in this parallel universe there has to be some yang to all this ying, so all the English clubs went out of the Champions League in the group stages, the television media companies got real and basically told the clubs the next rights deal would be back to early 90’s levels, Stuart Atwell will be exposed part of the Faking It TV series and Sky decide to sack all its pundits that have actually managed (so not that many then). All in all though a much more enjoyable experience than the turgid, over-hyped, predictable garbage this dimension will have to stomach.

If all the above happens it will be a joy to watch Leeds United promoted to it, if it doesn’t, remind me whey we want to (or rather don’t).

Michael Green

Football through a hardened glare

Sniffer Nose 16/02/10: Divisions Special, Premier League, L1 (including Leeds United), Blue Square Conference.

Feb 16th, 10 / Comments Off

 

This is Clarkeonenil’s regular comment column, cutting through the various passing issues of football and getting to the core principle in the shortest time.

Silly ideas factory.

When the PL set itself up as an independent league, pretending it was entitled to set its own regulations, it at least had the common not to actually do anything that undermined the core elements of the game, even if it did become a greed factory. However in recent years, under the stewardship of Richard Scudamore, the PL has come up with more and more bizarre ideas, mostly under the mistaken belief that the most successful revenue generating league in the world needs even more money raked in! First there was the 39th game aberration, roundly condemned and now in the very long grass and just yesterday we got the “4th Champions League place play-off” idiocy. Frankly the idea that you make finishing 7th in the top flight a passport to the CL is one that has no attraction in my book. Football is not Rugby League (yet) and thus doesn’t need falsely generated end of season entertainment.

If the overpaid little Blatter’s at the PL’s expensive London office need something to think about they should start with how they can help the members clubs curb debt, costs and wage inflation. They could also turn their mind to how to eliminate agents of players taking cuts from clubs. Another issues they might want to address include the over-reliance on foreign imports, the escalating cost of the match experience in the top division for fans, the lack of mobility of clubs leading to only a handful ever being in contention, the widening gap between the PL and the CCC in finance terms (4 relegation/promotion places isn’t a bad idea) and finally having a “fit and proper” test that actually counts for something.

If the little Blatter’s need to fiddle with qualification criteria for the CL then a play-off between the League Cup winners and the FA Cup winners is a maybe, at least the PL clubs will start to take that competition seriously again rather than seeing it as a hindrance to staying up!

Like a funny old Uncle.

L1, what a teeth gritting delight it is. Populated by a large bunch of going nowhere clubs and a select ground of declining big-boys the sooner you get out of it the better. The standard of football is dire, the stadiums mostly retro but with some decent ones, the supporters mostly moribund (with the obvious exception of the screwballs at Millwall) and over-ambition abounds. Take the example of Southend United, the fact that not one sod of grass has been cut in the 18 months since full planning permission was granted for the new ground (and two run ins with liquidation at the hands of HMRC in 3 months) hasn’t stopped the Essex yokels spitting blood at the suggestion it might not happen. They should look at Brighton, where it took the best part of a decade to fund the stadium (but at least in Falmer the work is happening, which it doesn’t even look close to doing off the A13) and stop living pipe-dreams.

Equally frustrating for the likes of us is the paucity of really competitive clubs this season. Norwich City, who looked in terminal decline in August lead the division, Leeds United, in the middle of an away form dip, sit “comfortably” in second. Third placed Charlton have hit the buffers and look like losing that 3rd spot if they don’t go on a winning streak soon. Experience tells us that one club will come from the play-off pack to either frighten to death or even displaced us from that second slot but this year they would have to be really on a roll until the end of the season to do so (that club at the moment could well be Millwall). The competition this season is surprisingly weak given how competitive it looked in August, blame the FL for the Southampton -15 points for part of that.

As Leeds fans we at Clarkeonenil shouldn’t be too disappointed in the lack of competitive edge in L1 this season, if we win all 3 coming home games and /or garner 2-5 more points in the next three games than Charlton do even the editor here is going to start to plan for getting into a proper division.

Dammed if they do, dammed if they don’t.

Its decision time this week for the Blue Square Conference (another league that mistakenly believes it can make the rules up as it goes along), do they deal with Chester City firmly or do they fudge it to the end of the season where other issues await them? Looked at coldly the obvious decision is to kick them out in the absence of a guarantee they can finish the season, however the knock on consequences of purging their record would change the promotion and relegation picture somewhat. Whilst normally I would not support such a distortion of the placings in this case, with the supporters of Chester City crying out to be liquidated, it looks like the BSC has no choice.

The BSC also has to deal with a self-imposed crises relating to how many clubs it will have to expelled for breathing their “no debts” rule. As far as we can work out the rule was slipped in whilst a whole raft of other regulations were being passed at the last league AGM. Now the owners of clubs are saying they didn’t understand the rule and would not have voted it in if a separate vote had been taken. Normally I would be in support of a rule that limits debt but it does seem ion this case the consequences of imposing it in June could be wholesale expulsions. A year-long moratorium with a realistic limit on debts would be preferable.

Personally I feel this idiocy of “independent leagues” should stop. If the “Pyramid System” is to have any meaning then it’s time the BSC conference was renamed L3 (or really Division 5) and split in North and South, with 4 clubs up every season.

The Other 91 Basket Cases

A taste of things to come.

Oct 26th, 09 / Comments Off

 

Your reading a pre 2010-11 archived article

Every supporter of a PL club with ambitions in Europe should read this: http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/sport/display.var.2533188.0.club_for_sale_whos_buying.php for that is a fortetaste of the future to come of some of them.

Football through a hardened glare