Baseball inherently involves much more random chance than any other major US sport. Most seasons, the best team in the MLB regular season is around a 63% win percentage. The Yankees are about as dominant as it's possible to be in baseball over the long run. Of course, they also play in the only major US league without a salary cap, have the highest payroll in the league most seasons, and I don't think they've ever been outside the top three payrolls in MLB.
Note, when the Yankees won most of their championships their league was a single table. They played the champion of the other league that also won their single table in a 7 game series. I've always found it interesting that for 50 years people were fans of teams that rarely played in the championships. I'll add the proliferation of playoffs and wildcards to the list of things the boomers screwed up
The luxury tax threshold seems to be becoming a salary cap. Only two teams paid luxury tax last season and neither were the Yankees or the Dodgers. This season only the Cubs, Red Sox and Yankees were subject to luxury tax.
No, just you and the rest of the usual suspects. Glancing over the last few pages of insanely off topic posts, there is no hope for this forum until a representative of the actual decent American soccer majority gets to moderate this anti-Pro/Rel troll infested bullshit "discussion." You MLS apologists and your anti-Pro/Rel trolls will destroy this forum when it comes to the vast majority of American soccer fans living in non-MLS cities, which would include a modest majority of folks living in MLS cities like Chicago. The usual suspects have completely ruined this forum. Let me know when a BS mod better than a warm bucket of spit actually moderates this thread.
Vast majority? Show your work. For the record, 45% of all Americans live in current MLS metropolitan areas. The four already-announced expansion cities would push that to 50%. Most US soccer fans are in large cities, and the historic soccer hotbeds are all in MLS except for St. Louis, where an expansion team has already been announced. It appears highly unlikely that a "vast majority" of fans are outside MLS cities. Moreover, the majority of non-MLS TV viewership in the US is Liga MX, a league that has playoffs and (unofficial) parity measures, and is widely known to have pro/rel in name only.
Though this has the same problem the other "team salary lists" do this year. For whatever reason the union listed players who had been cut but were still being paid by MLS as unaffiliated but in many cases the team's are still taking the cap hits for those players. So Colorado, for example, is still paying Gashi is $1.6M this year and taking his cap hit, but he's not included in Colorado's salary list.
Puts pin back in.... Some nice perspective: “Just to stay in this league, we need to build another stand behind the goal. If we get into the play-offs, we have to get even more seating.” But I thought.....oh never mind.... “There are 1,150 kids enrolled in our youth schemes, starting from four years old,” White says. “My old teammates’ kids are signed up. We’re proud of that. We mustn’t ever sell out, and put success above sustainability. We’ve been offered all sorts of money, partners who say: ‘Just tell us who you want to sign.’ But we don’t want to push our way into League Two and then it all crashes down.” Building community is great. This is a great success story. Sandwiched between “millionaires’ row” and protected countryside, developing the ground was “a nightmare. Every fence post, every seat, had to be signed off. I went to meetings, and people were angry. One guy said our floodlights were ruining his stargazing. But this is what goes into running a non-league club.” Sounds a lot like what happens all across the US...... The modern-day Dorking Wanderers have been built “hand to mouth, brick by brick”, according to White. “As you move through the leagues, you have to keep building infrastructure. It started back at Big Field. We got promoted, so we had to put a rope round the pitch! That becomes a fixed barrier, then paths, floodlights, seats … now we’re in a 3,000-capacity stadium.” So wait...there are standards for semi and professional teams in the UK??? Any who, this is a great story. Sounds a bit like Kingston Stockade too. Well, except for the multimillionaire founding thing (Kingston).
Because seating capacity is the only standard we have here. Despite the fact that their permanent stadium 3x the size of D3's requirements, they couldn't be sanctioned as D3 because their owner is a wretched commoner: https://companycheck.co.uk/director/912897341/MR-MARC-WHITE/summary
Based on what I'm reading here. I wouldn't want this guy touching my professional team with a 10-foot pole. But I like that you're cleverly leaving out that the American pro-league standard requires an owner to have a net worth of $10 million and hold a minimum of 30% of the club. So you can have 70% of the ownership be Detroit try-hards if you find someone with some cash willing to own 30% of the club.
It HASN'T changed though has it! Or else Sunderland wouldn't be in a minor league but Bournemouth would! Leicester wouldn't have won the league and be challenging again!! How many feckin anamolies do you want before they're no longer anomalies lol!! A couple of seasons ago you told me that relegation for Leicester was INEVITABLE and United would be top 4 FOREVER, I told you then that was bollox and already I'm proved right. You told me promotion was pointless because the same 3 clubs that come up would go straight back down! Why weren't Palace relegated? Or Bournemouth? Or West Ham? Or Wolves? Because again what you claimed has proved to be bollox, how many times do you need to be proved wrong!!! You are starting to look foolish.
Leicester has finished 12th, 9th, and 9th since they won the league, finishing an average of just over 49 points behind the winners. They haven't challenged to win the league in any sense of the word. And for goddam sake get it through your thick skull that we're 8 games into the season. The standings at this point are going to have very little reflection of the final standings. Even extrapolating out from the current standings has Leicester finishing almost 50 points off the pace.
Ok, again, we set a rule in this thread. If you're going to claim somebody said something you're going to have to back it up with proof. I assume you can show us where @HailtotheKing said Man u would be top 4 forever and Leicester's relegation was inevitable?
That's not what ANYONE has said. It's clear you aren't capable of rational and logical thought, or even carrying on an intelligent & constructive conversation. You've also demonstrated repeatedly that you are closed off to the different view points of others. In addition when you are presented with facts and evidence that are contrary to your ironclad beliefs you either dismiss them or ignore them entirely. You're incoherent rambling rants contribute nothing to the discussion at hand.
http://www.sportsclubstats.com/England/Premier.html Great website showing that through 8 games, Manchester United has a 6.8 % chance of being relegated. Leicester has a 6.8 % chance of winning the title. Chances seem slim of either event happening. 2 teams have a double digit chance to win the league. 6 teams have a double digit chance at being relegated. 10 teams have a double digit chance of qualifying for champions league.
From a media market perspective, MLS will serve 46% of households by 2022. If you add all of the expansion candidates, or look at the top USL cities, it's around 57%.
Why not? Because he's not rich? He's built up a successful club from nothing, but, you're right, he didn't secure franchise territorial rights so it's obviously doomed to fail.
In the US? He’s not rich enough on his own to support a fully professional club without diving deep into debt. So no. He wouldn’t pass the vetting process for an Arena Football league here. I like my teams to last more than a year and if you’re investing in the pro level of a niche sport in the US, you need to come correct. England is a little different because of the century of mega support for soccer. In the USA this guy would rightly get laughed out of a league board meeting unless he has some real money behind him.
Pretty harsh on the Dorking FC fans who had donated tens of thousands of pounds to try and keep their club in business. And ironic how Wanderers are benefiting from a nice little stadium, the upgrade of which bankrupted their competition.
Why should the owner be rich rather than the company be well run and growing? The only reason a business should require a rich owner is if they are spending more than they can reasonably hope to make, which shouldn't be the model we think is normal.