Whole Game Solution survey (Important)

**themaclad** · 27-09-2016, 08:37

As the last posts says only needs 8 clubs to vote against it, given the extra money in the Championship in respects of gate money, e.g North End have Villa, Huddersfield and Newcastle before the end of October, if we finished 20th next season and being one of the extra teams being relegated we could have a run of corresponding fixtures against the likes of Gillingahm, Shrewsbury and Port Vale with no disrespects to those clubs, likely to get 15000 plus gates in the Championship and less than 10,000 against the others.
The proposal is typical of the suits who run the game.
This CEO Shaun Harvey seems to be a bit of a voice however seems particularly clueless as to how the normal football fan thinks.

Devongone · 27-09-2016, 11:05

As you say under almost any reorganisation proposal Preston would currently be looking at relegation. The only way I can see such a prospect being palatable to clubs who might face demotion from the Championship would be if the football they were demoted to had an exciting new aspect together with the prospect of a successful season and a promotion fight ....... That was the aim behind my own four Conference proposal below the Championship, with a few more former Championship teams coming down and the creation of a few genuine Premier B sides ......... but certainly Chesterfield fans were wholly against it. If I re-jigged that proposal without its most unpopular element, the B teams and replaced them from the National League, then as you say, the prospect looks less than exciting from a Preston perspective. I'll list how your Conference, the Mersey Conference, might look and it doesn't even convince me -

Carlisle
Barrow
Fleetwood
Morecambe
Bolton
Oldham
Rochdale
Accrington
PRESTON
Tranmere
Blackburn
Chester
Wigan
Crewe
Wrexham
Blackpool

Now apart from the prospect of intense rivalry battling Blackburn for promotion with just one team to go up I doubt it thrills you. From the perspective of the teams suddenly finding themselves in competition with Preston and Blackburn it might look slightly better. But without B teams I can't see how any change benefits football and none of the clubs wanted B teams. I suspect Barnet's Chairman is trying to kill the proposals by looking interested.

**themaclad** · (This post was last modified: 27-09-2016, 12:07 by themaclad.)

Last night summed up football neither Burnley and Watford will ever break into the top six and each season they will be in the top league they will get £110 million if they get relegated they get rewarded with another £96 million for four years and utter joke, the problems with the game are at the top not the bottom, Watford had 10 non Brits playing in the second half, and with the cash they get the cheap foreign import will always be available

Devon
The Mersey Conference looks so depressing

**St Charles Owl** · 27-09-2016, 16:57

There is no way Championship clubs will vote for this. The goal of most Championship clubs is the get the chance to get to the prem. FFP rules mean any that are not on parachute payments are already struggling to keep up with the relegated teams and cutting games out of the calendar will hurt them from a revenue aspect right out of the gate. For me this alone will kill this idea.

Devongone · 27-09-2016, 18:21

I agree with you both.

I thought my idea of conferences producing local derbies had both the potential to be exciting and would mean that everyone in the league structure would be only one step from the Championship, or two from the rich rewards of Premier status. But once a club like Preston is faced with the prospect of Barrow, Chester, Wrexham and Tranmere that does look twice as depressing as the slog of Division One football. The whole point of any reorganisation seemed to me to be to make the whole game better. Replace those four National clubs with exciting young players from Man City, Man Utd, Liverpool and Everton and it looks brighter for the other teams in there and that might help the development of English footballers. But who is really going to be enamoured by a potential trip to Barrow?

The irony is that there is something wrong with the EFL. Look at tonight's fixtures. Even though they are going to hammer us, do Gillingham really want to travel to Chesterfield on a Tuesday night? After Saturday, the "knocks" will probably have reported in on Sunday, Monday's training will have been light ahead of preparation for the game. Tuesday is a long journey and a match. Wednesday is more "knocks", getting over the game and light training and a sour atmosphere if by a miracle they lost. Thursday they might get to train and practice ..... Friday they are preparing for Saturday and more of the same. And we wonder why they look jaded and lacking in skills ....... Portsmouth go to Blackpool, Morecambe to Barnet, Yeovil miles across country to Cambridge, Newport can't wait to arrive in Cleethorpes, Luton must love the idea of Hartlepool and Plymouth go the Orient, Leyton not the real far east .......... I bet these games are feasts of football excellence, Cruyff turns, a few Ronaldo step-overs ....... Such a programme would turn Puskas into a journeyman.

One major trouble is every fan fears relegation, and a forced relegation for finishing almost halfway is unlikely to gain much support unless the EFL finds a few geese and golden eggs. The inherent conservatism of a body needing 90% to change anything might come to football's rescue this time. The trouble is that I fear even if we came up with a panacea for football even Michael Gove couldn't re-educate football's bosses sufficiently to achieve 90%.

**St Charles Owl** · 27-09-2016, 18:33

The thing is the nerds who control the computer that works out the fixtures can change all of that anyway without any need for reorganization. There are enough localish teams in each division to make sure that midweek fixtures involve games with reduced travel for both teams and fans. It doesn't have to be "the" premier local derby on a Tuesday night but clubs travelling across the country on weekdays makes no sense.

Devongone · 28-09-2016, 12:16

I agree that such midweek idiocy could easily be altered. A seasonal fixture list takes a computer nano-seconds to produce, how much more work would it be to pre-program it so that some fixture idiocies would be avoided midweek. BUT that still does not solve the disruption and strain the midweek programme produces for tiny profits and even some losses. Dagenham cannot financially afford to travel to Barrow inside or outside the EFL, but more important for clubs with small squads that midweek game looms large in their entire week's activities and must alter their attitude to both the Saturday before and after. Long haul on Saturday, home game Tuesday, long haul again Saturday. That's only going to turn thighs into tree trunks and mind sets into pure survivalism. Managers become trained in reacting to immediate circumstance rather than planning ways forward. You are never going to find a far-sighted man if he never gets to look further ahead than next Tuesday .....

Last night's EFL fixtures didn't produce a single gate of 20,000 and three clubs in Division 2 failed to reach 2,000, two of them only just topped 1,000 and no one made it to 5,000. Yep those midweek games must be a real financial winner and if you were a club developing young talent your first consideration could well be how disruptive introducing developing youngsters to your team might be if you kept having to rest them. My thought is at 17+ young players need to be playing against men, but if you tailor your structure to something that is a survival test for a 25 year old at his physical peak you shouldn't be surprised if the finished article in your youth programme looks more like Jordan Henderson than Jean Tigana ..... and with subtlety to match.

**themaclad** · 28-09-2016, 13:05

Yep those who arrange the fixtures are the problem, Pompey at Blackpool last night, madness