[spireitematt]

Manchester City's Chief Excutive has talked about how the Football League's business model is not sustainable and that they should rethink the whole of the football pyramid and introduce Premier League B teams into the lower divisions to replace clubs which go bust or don't survive and they see the Coronavirus pandemic a good time to look at the structure of the football pyramid. They are complaining that they have hundreds of players in the academy who are 17-18 etc who don't have the opportunity for first team and that German clubs buy them cheap, develop them, give them game time and then sell them back to them for 10 times the price.

The way I see it is this. Get rid of the U23 and U21 leagues and create a reserve league where these players can play against players who are older, more experienced than them. It would also give fringe players an opportunity for fitness and to show the manager what he can do in a game and it would also help players coming back from injury with fitness etc.

L1 and L2 need to look at becoming regional leagues of North and South where the top 2 teams from each league get promotion. You could have 3-4 teams getting promoted but I don't think the Championship would take kindly to that.

If B teams get put into the Football League then it will destroy the football pyramid and also destroy the league's. Who will want to watch there team play a B team on a Saturday afternoon and the B team wouldn't bring many fans if the first team is playing at home at dinnertime or is on TV. What the Premier League need to understand is in the Football League and Non-League right down to grassroots football there are a lot more fans than fans of Premier League clubs.

I think the Premier League don't like the fact we have a unique system in England and Britain regarding the football pyramid, they see the rest of the pyramid as competition and possibly as an enemy because they I think they would love it if 1 or possibly 2 divisions in England existed as it would bring more focus and revenue on them especially from a TV audience aspect. The Premier League in the near future will probably go the way that American franchises of leagues have gone in sport where there is no promotion and relegation and you have to buy your way into the league, if that happened then it would be detrimental to international football.

Have you noticed though especially in the Premier League, teams and managers are very reluctant to buy players from the lower leagues or even play youth players in the first team instead they will go and buy an experienced player from a team abroad for about £40-50 million but who says the experienced player can't make mistakes?