Apparently our esteemed owner has pissed off the suitor who has been bailing him out over the last 2 months and he's asking for his money back.
Arsenal 'gave' Leicester the title?? I'm sorry I don't follow, I don't think you can give credit of their title to Arsenal? Incidentally I think Leicester have a good chance of finishing above A*se next season. Did you know that both Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest were once part of the 'immovable' elite? Both have been European Champions too, Forest twice! Yet that didn't 'cement' their places in the top 6. I bet in 1991 when Forest were 8th in the Premier League and Leicester were 22nd in the Championship that they would think that they would both be where they are today.
Call me an old cynic but I don't think they would have 'let' them score if there was still a chance of an automatic promotion place! :-D
I've posted actual comments from the director of Accrington Stanley earlier in this thread talking about how being relegated from the EFL to the National League can be a death sentence for a club. When judging who's opinion I'm going to value I'm going to choose the guy actually running a lower-league club over a random poster.
Well, considering the team he was specifically talking about was Notts County, yeah, they would have been.
I guess I over explained its origins and why you probably shouldn't use it. No biggie though, as nobody I know would call out some guy who's never lived in America on using the outdated "colored" unless he/she started using the "N" word alongside it. But if I myself were to start using "colored" (especially in a redneck Oklahoma accent) to describe black athletes at a sports bar in Tulsa or Chicago or LA or Philly or Boston (or even Muskogee, OK), I'd get some pretty weird/dirty looks. And deservedly so... If we're talking about race, I'd rather talk about the closest thing America's ever had to a single table.... the Pennant Race. Major League Baseball postseason Growing up as a sports fan in Oklahoma, I'm accustomed to smaller regional divisions requiring unbalanced schedules, which in turn require some sort of playoff to determine who really is the best team in the entire league by the end of the season... that said, I respect single table with a perfectly balanced schedule. I think playoffs are WAY overused (abused?) in American professional sports, but I do like the aspect of it that rewards division winners with home field advantage but also allows the best 2nd place teams a chance to prove they're better than some of the division winners. I also like rewarding the team that becomes the best by the end of the regular season. I mean, if it weren't for the weird system of too many teams in the playoffs, my 1983 Tulsa Roughnecks, who started the season with only 2 wins and 8 losses, would've never been in the position to win the title, despite winning 6 straight to end the season (9 including playoffs) on the way to winning Soccer Bowl 83 in Vancouver... at that time, any "Supporters Shield" was conspicuously missing, which is sad because Vancouver (24-6) earned it over America's superclub at the time, the NY Cosmos (22-8).
Ah, well in that case, we've discussed ad-nauseum about how Notts County's relegation from EFL is symptomatic of their failure as an organization, not a cause of it.
But they do have to make investment decisions to compete for a title. Because there aren't enormous disparities in resources, the expectation for every team is that they are either in realistic contention for a championship or building toward it. Fans will tolerate a rebuilding year, but they will not show up for a team that appears to be making no effort to build toward a run for the championship. American fans measure lack of success in years since the team's last championship. But even teams that don't win a championship for decades are contenders on a fairly regular basis. The Chicago Cubs, during their US record 108-year title drought, were in the World Series seven times and were in the National League Championship Series (MLB semifinals) four more times.
MLS Clubs finish where they deserve to. Man United's level of mismanagement wouldn't have seen them still finish comfortably in the top 6 if resources weren't such a large factor.
In fairness, it's more the explicit parity measures that keep the leagues competitive for the most part. Though parity makes relegation for a single poor season a bit harsh and arguably less valid, because you're not necessarily relegating a team based on their ability to compete. That's why something like the Mexican system would be more appropriate.
And I'm going to choose a guy with actual clout over any anti-Pro/Rel self proclaimed "experts" from BigSoccer... BigSoccer Expert = oxymoron #ProRelForUSA Riccardo Silva, countdown for the verdict on American football "Winning (D2) by us is not the same as being promoted; it is more important to have 200 million dollars to register and play (in MLS)."
"MLS Clubs finish where they deserve to" because despite the reality that we have different levels of engagement from ownership between teams, there isn't the vast economic gulf between the "big" teams and the also-rans that we see in the PL. Yes, Atlanta, Seattle, and the LA teams might spend more on DPs, but that's 3 players.
For notes sake; since 2000; MLS has had 12 different champions, the EPL, has had 5; La Liga, Serie A and the Bundesliga have all had four.
Teams that play well in spite of apathetic ownership, are just as deserving of their place as those that struggle despite enthusiastic, engaged ownership.
Yes, but it was a Villa link soooo Yes, they did. I guess you don't remember how the '15-16 season went. Arsenal absolutely shit the bed and handed Leicester the keys to the car. You keep bringing up things that I've addressed with something you continue to ignore. Money has changed the reality of football since the teams/times you are referencing. We've referenced Andy Holt ... owner of Accrington Stanely and his DIRECT QUOTES. Sorry, but what he is saying trumps your opinion on the matter (and any other fans' opinion for that matter). Oh, and @JasonMa has also referenced a certain someone involved with Blackburn Rovers and THEIR direct quotes/info directly from him. I'm going with those two sources of information/opinions on this. Except Andy Holt is the owner of Accrington Stanely, not a self-proclaimed BIgsocer "expert" ... Oh, "clout" ... in what capacity, exactly? This is one of the guys that BOUGHT INTO THE SYSTEM knowing full well what it is and then cried foul on it.
Riccardo Silva was operating in a private league that was born out of members of USL deciding to go in a different direction. The system also facilitates any such private league applying for D1 status. FIFA's rules were born out of a bid to quell owners gaming existing pro/rel leagues by purchasing & relocating higher level clubs to their team's locale. Like so many of the rules that MLS is claimed to be violating, the spirit of the statute was not to condemn existing closed leagues.
^^ This has nothing to do with this: Man United can finish 6th despite mismanagement because their annual wage bill is twice the highest spender outside of the top six (Everton). You're not going to get that sort of disparity in MLS, because you can't due to the salary cap.
A similar bizarre mindset to what I saw in motion a couple of weeks ago on twitter... two soccer fans from Texas, one from Austin and the other from San Antonio.... arguing about soccer and who deserves to be in MLS.... not about which of their two USL-Championship teams are better or may finish closer to the top of the table this season.... They literally were arguing over which city, Austin or San Antonio, had the biggest GDP and whether that GDP should be measured based on how much $$$ is made on a per capita basis or overall....
Nonsense. The rule is the rule. And the United States is a maturing soccer market which was just awarded the 2026 World Cup. USSF and MLS are technically in violation of that rule, or at least the spirit of that rule. Whether it is enforced is gonna be anybody's guess. And nobody's gonna arbitrarily force MLS to adopt it next year... that's just one of your strawman arguments... Silva (and Commisso) have good points and a strong case to make. I hope they succeed, because I sincerely believe all of American soccer would benefit. Sports monopolies are technically illegal in the US (except MLB), yet MLS, after 20+ years of USSF D1 exclusivity, operates as an entrenched defacto major league monopoly, a single business that has some rather obvious conflict of interest issues with both USSF and SUM..
But I thought money didn't buy table placement ... gotta play the games or something? Yes and no. TFC significantly outspent everyone in the league (26m while 2nd place LAX was on 17m .... they spent 2x and up to 5x more than all but 3 clubs. Now, the concentration of those funds is in a much smaller handful of players but the spending is absolutely as disparate. They were arguing over the MERITS of their cities? Odd you laugh at that seeing as how MERIT is what the pro/rel crowed you've joined argues over. Nonsense, and FIFA clarified it. You just refuse REALITY because it doesn't fit your narrative. The rule IS the rule .. it just isn't what you want it to be and continually falsely present it to be. The only thing they're in "violation" of is the "pro/rel wishing well" ... FIFA explicitly named America as an exception when they passed this stuff. Again, facts you just pretend don't exist. Actually, they would have if they'd have done all of this INSTEAD OF BUYING INTO IT ... but they didn't. They hopped on board and thought people were going to acquiesce to them for, whatever ego driven reason they thought. It isn't their fault nobody has legitimately given a go at building a D1 league. It isn't their fault that the NASL bought Commisso's bullshit and ate itself. It isn't their fault they're successful to the point people are lining up to get in. The failure of another league/business model/group of people that do instead of bitch to emerge is not their fault. They aren't a monopoly because of the failure of everyone that isn't them. That's not how it works.