[Devongone]

How is your club’s website looking? Are you hesitating? No real opinion ………. Why? You use this site, you have some web-savvy …… isn’t it slightly strange that your club’s site is just something that exists,  where you might just check the final official announcement that a player has signed or departed, probably days after the rumour mill has ground you into distraction, but not much else.

If you were starting a business would your first thought be, “I must get a website and make it look just like everyone else’s”?

Football League websites are almost incredibly boring. They are badly laid-out, totally lacking in impact and bear very little relation to the clubs themselves. If they present a brand at all it is that of the league, not the individual club. Oooooooh look there’s the corporate dining, that’s individual isn’t it? Actually no, almost everybody’s got it. It even looks the goddam same. Every experience is multiplied seventy two times from Derby, through Huddersfield to Chesterfield and Southend.

Football League sites don’t provide a shell clubs individualise, they are a self-reproducing model. Ironic in a game, which for fans is about supporting a team ……. which is different from every other team.

Normal businesses view a website as an opportunity. Football clubs seem to treat it as an unwelcome interface with the fans, a necessary evil, a place of disguise and undisclosed fees, where they can formally thank a sacked manager for his 3 months of loyalty.

Maybe I’m the only thinks this, but I reckon football is deliberately not even taking a shot at a huge open goal here due to its nineteenth-century, bureaucratic outlook.

[St Charles Owl]

They are essentially following the American model where the collective use exactly the same format but with their colors and their players. I can definitely see the benefits of this, shared cost, consistent format and information, allows the small teams to have a good website etc etc, but the problem for me is that it's a crap website to use. This is where it differs from the American models it strives to be, they are generally vibrant, totally geared to the club, informative and easy to navigate, plus the American model is also backed up by a league website, so the Chicago Bears have a website and the NFL have an excellent website as well. The FL website is garbage as well.

The FL has been trying to find an identity ever since the PL came into existence but it has never managed it. Now they are about to change the name in the next attempt to push their brand abroad. Could it be time to follow the Scottish route and merge the two entities??

[Devongone]

Yes to your merger proposal from me St Charles.

I can see the point of consistent format if the information is there and presented with some originality, wit and bears some relation to the club itself ......... but the whole point of say the Owls and the Blades is they are different. Their difference and their rivalry excites us, bringing them together should forge the League's identity.

The only reason the League actually needs its identity is the negative process of distinguishing itself from The Premier League. The identity of the Premier League is founded on the rivalry of top clubs with good players ..... not on the money of the latest sponsor etc. The Premier League gets its glamour from the clubs. Unless the Football League allows its clubs to forge identities it can only prolong its own identity crisis. But it can't rival the Premier League by some branding exercise - it couldn't even if it knew what it was doing ...... which it doesn't as its messy websites prove.

All the Football League has done for its clubs is to ensure no-one has an absolutely appalling site, and the cost is no-one's got a good one.

The truth is websites aren't that expensive to develop or to run. All kinds of cash-strapped organisations come up with cool sites.