[bluepooch]

On main site now .
Good that the club have asked the fans opinions
I've basically ticked no to everything except the possibility of regionalizing games.What good will the changes do to our club ? Virtually nothing in my opinion.
Please go on and give your opinion .

[SaltergateBorn]

Thanks for the tip-off on that one, Pooch. I must admit I didn`t know anything about the survey until I read your post and then the club website but I`ve put my two penneth in now, for what it`s worth.

I`d be interested to know what you guys think, though.

[Devongone]

Thanks I'll go and look at it and do it. Basically I would like to change how the lower leagues operate but I've naturally got my own ideas ....... as ever!

[spireitematt]

I did it last night pretty much said No to everything.

[Devongone]

I suppose it was natural I should be a one-off! Bit surprised at you Matt as a young man full of ideas ......... in fact your being such a definite NO has made me wonder whether I might yet again be wrong, but I did say YES to a lot of things.

92 is just a historic number. 46 is too many games. There are too many ill-attended night matches. The three lower divisions are a test of stamina and resilience, not skill.There is too much travelling (that clubs can't afford) .... in the National League Torquay yesterday had the choice between an over-night stay or a coach. The players drove to a hotel near their the match!

I used to think 5 divisions of 20 was the answer, BUT there are always at least 2 sides not good enough for the Premier and mostly the Championship splits into those in the running and the rest, SO my proposal would be to reduce the Premiership to 18 teams (as they say they play too much). I'd do the same with the Championship and with the remaining 64 clubs I'd set up 4 Challenger Conferences of equal status, roughly regional.

From our point of view that would give us 30 league games a season. That would leave room for a new Challenger Trophy instead of Checkatrade. That would have a group stage and it could be innovative. Why not four points for a win, one for a draw and a bonus point for every goal a team scores over one? Exciting for fans and the right place to experiment with rule innovations. And a genuine Trophy at the end the end of it.

The FA Cup - no, we shouldn't scrap replays because we could bring a Chelsea back to our place, but we need to re-jig. The final Qualifying round brings in the 24 National teams, Round One has the excitement of League Clubs coming in .... the Third Round has the top clubs ...... so why do we let the competition becalm in The Second Round. Second Round day is a nothing-day, and it needs to maintain the Cup's ooomph. I'd re-jig it so The Championship teams come into the second round, enlivening that round and the Third Round would still see the entry of the Giants.

As for 8 new clubs we don't really need Bromleys, Suttons and Solihull Moors except by promotion if they can make it ........ but we do need to develop young players stranded in Academies with no hope of a first team game. All that Sky money needs to go somewhere more productive than the deep pockets of the foreign agents of second-rate players. Why not let that money create the equivalent of a Real Madrid B or two run as separate clubs? And it might help to end the farce of top clubs fielding weakened sides they think still capable of beating the likes of Chesterfield in cup competitions. If we drew Man Utd in the Cup we would have the excitement and magic of actually playing them rather than their understudies. I reckon there's a lot to gain from change and it's not as if the external evidence of the success of English football goes any further than finance. Once we are out on the field we can't beat Feyenoord or Iceland.

My only worry is that change might, like the creation of the Premiership, be seen as the answer for years and years to come. It seems to me when we watch our international teams we find they are unable to adapt to new situations on the field. They try the same things over and over. All they are doing is mirroring our national approach to the game, we need to welcome change, repond to it and keep both responding and innovating. Yeah I know I'm a lone voice!

And as for a winter break - we don't get winter now. Okay Accrington and Carlisle got flooded, but Newbury got flooded on Friday.

[spireitematt]

I suppose it was natural I should be a one-off! Bit surprised at you Matt as a young man full of ideas ......... in fact your being such a definite NO has made me wonder whether I might yet again be wrong, but I did say YES to a lot of things.

Thank you Dev but I believe that if it ain't broke don't fix it. Yes I do have a lot of ideas which I believe could change football like a lot of other fans but those in suits don't listen to the fans they do what they want which is the complete opposite.

[Devongone]

I suppose it was natural I should be a one-off! Bit surprised at you Matt as a young man full of ideas ......... in fact your being such a definite NO has made me wonder whether I might yet again be wrong, but I did say YES to a lot of things.

Thank you Dev but I believe that if it ain't broke don't fix it. Yes I do have a lot of ideas which I believe could change football like a lot of other fans but those in suits don't listen to the fans they do what they want which is the complete opposite.

Matt I'm wondering how much more evidence you need of broke ..... and how broke it needs to be before we fix it. Are we waiting for a footballing aleppo?

How many clubs do you want struggling on the edge of administration? How poorly would you like to see our national teams perform?

We have the probably richest league in the world .......... and internationally it takes us until the 93rd minute to beat Slovakia. Clubs like Crystal Palace are amongst the world's rich list, but a city like Portsmouth has a dropping-to-bits stadium and a team that can't win at Accrington. Our FA Cup is made ridiculous by top clubs refusing to play their best players and scheduling matches to suit TV not fans.

If it ain't broke don't fix it is a phrase popular with red-neck American tea-party types NOT bright, intelligent young Labour members ........ And don't forget to watch Neil Kinnock on Panorama on Monday telling us how to win an election (because he was so good at it!)

[SaltergateBorn]

Sorry, Dev, but I really don`t see your logic on this one.

The problems you refer to (which I wouldn`t argue with for a second, by the way) are down to the ethos of the Premier League, not the structure of the leagues below it - and I thought that that was what this was all about. The main problem of the lower leagues is that the Premier League, as I have said before on another thread, is a self-serving money machine that doesn`t give a flying wotsit about either the national team or the health of the game as a whole in this country. A lot of Premier League clubs are nothing more than money-laundering operations for foreign 'businessmen' of very dubious financial integrity to wash their dirty money. I`m not averse to criticisng the FA - God knows, they often deserve it - but I do believe that they genuinely have the well-being of the game as a whole in this country at heart. The problem is, they no longer have any power as this was usurped by the financial muscle of the big clubs some years ago - and it looks as though UEFA may well be going down the same drain.

The basic problem of the Football League, as I see it anyway, is that so little of the obscene amounts of money generated and then spent (wasted?) by the Premier League filters down the system. It goes on overseas players of mediocre quality rather than home-grown talent in the lower leagues who could, given experience at the highest level, potentially develop into international class players, if not world class occasionally. If a rule were to be brought that would force our top division to have on the field a minimum number of England qualified players, then surely this would start to happen. we would no longer have this ridiculous situation whereby only about 30% of the players in the Premier League on any given match-day are England qualified - and that figure is falling every year. League clubs would then have a viable market for their best players and would have a financial incentive for nurturing young talent through academies, etc. At the moment, they have little or none.

I really don`t see how the future of the lower league clubs is going to be miraculously transformed by regionalising (familiarity breeds contempt, as the saying goes), by reducing their revenue as a result of playing fewer games, by bringing in a midwinter break that we don`t need (our winter climate is far milder than the European mainland because of the Gulf Stream) and that would remove the traditional 'bumper crowd' games on Boxing Day and New Years Day and by bring in meaningless cup competitions that attendances (or lack of) show how little interest they attract from supporters, whilst at the same time virtually castrating the one cup competition that does attract our interest - the FA Cup. I really don`t see the point of any of it when it ignores the overwhelming problem.

Perhaps if the wealth of the game were spread more evenly and if we had a more level playing-field as a result, the game could go back to being a sport and less of a 'marketing concept' (yes, I`ve actually heard that phrase used!) that just helps the rich get richer and sod the rest.

[spireitematt]

I suppose it was natural I should be a one-off! Bit surprised at you Matt as a young man full of ideas ......... in fact your being such a definite NO has made me wonder whether I might yet again be wrong, but I did say YES to a lot of things.

Thank you Dev but I believe that if it ain't broke don't fix it. Yes I do have a lot of ideas which I believe could change football like a lot of other fans but those in suits don't listen to the fans they do what they want which is the complete opposite.

Matt I'm wondering how much more evidence you need of broke ..... and how broke it needs to be before we fix it. Are we waiting for a footballing aleppo?

How many clubs do you want struggling on the edge of administration? How poorly would you like to see our national teams perform?

We have the probably richest league in the world .......... and internationally it takes us until the 93rd minute to beat Slovakia. Clubs like Crystal Palace are amongst the world's rich list, but a city like Portsmouth has a dropping-to-bits stadium and a team that can't win at Accrington. Our FA Cup is made ridiculous by top clubs refusing to play their best players and scheduling matches to suit TV not fans.

If it ain't broke don't fix it is a phrase popular with red-neck American tea-party types NOT bright, intelligent young Labour members ........ And don't forget to watch Neil Kinnock on Panorama on Monday telling us how to win an election (because he was so good at it!)

I don't think restructuring the leagues will help the National team or having Premier League B teams in the JPT or Whatever its called now will help us in the future. Yes it needs fixing but not what they're proposing.

My ideas would be:

• Make the fit and proper person test more stricter for football ownership
  
• Put more money from the Premier League into grassroots football
  
• Put a cap on how much a player can be paid the cap would depend on what division the player would play in
  
• Make the UEFA A & B Licenses cheaper like they are in Spain and Germany
  
• Make Premier League clubs field at least 5/6 British players in there first teams
  
• Put the National League teams in the Football League Trophy instead of Premier League B teams
  
• Get clubs to work with the fans to lower prices to attract more fans through the turnstiles
  
• Scrap the January transfer window and the players you start with at the beginning of the season you finish with but have loan deals if needed
  
• England selection needs to be looked at and instead of focusing on Premier League players look at players in the Championship and L1.
  
• Give the FA Cup winners a Champions League spot then certain clubs would take it more seriously
  
• Stop clubs changing there kits every 5 minutes as fans can't keep up or afford them. Clubs would have to have kits for 2 seasons.
  
• Stop TV companies changing kick off times and dates to suit there audience as its stupid to make Southampton fans travel to Manchester on a Friday night.
  

If I was really radical I have a cap on how much Premier League clubs could spend in a transfer window and if they spent over they would have points deducted.

[SaltergateBorn]

I really couldn`t argue with any of those, Matt.

The only thing is that I think you`re setting the bar a a bit low at 5/6 British players on the pitch at any given time. If you`re saying British rather than English specifically, I`d be inclined to go as high as 8 or even 9.

Never gonna happen, though - sadly.