More tactics. This is a clear oversimplification of events. I've provided details that show there were mitigating circumstances to each of these cases. Dismissing those details as "weasel words" is a weak deflection and you know it.
A "Phoenix club"'would not be allowed to complete in the Conference. They'd probably have to start at the seventh level or below. Accrington Stanley reformed (after 40 years) in a public park. A Phoenix club is simply a club with a similar name as the original, like Seattle Sounders.
I'm aware of that. Based on Hereford's phoenix club, I presume a phoenix Leyton Orient would start in the Essex Senior League or perhaps the Isthmian League D1N. The latter would be equivalent to the level FC Halifax Town re-started at. Accrington re-formed four years after the original team finally disappeared in '66. They've played at the Crown Ground right from the beginning. It's frequently more than that though in that they often play at the erstwhile team's ground and often are run by supporters of that team.
The Leyton Orient owner hasn't done anything which would disqualify him as a director under the Fit and Proper Persons Test.
Maidstone Invicta were taken over ... they were a youth club. Yes, they ended up using the original club's training grounds/etc but the club itself was a separate club from MstoneU that was taken over and after a couple of years renamed to a new MstoneU. If people are going to claim Cosmos .... there's no way SJ doesn't fit the bill as well.
It was certainly compelling enough for them to have their best ever gates, a few years ago there were 6000 fans at Brighton home games, now there are 30,000, no pro/rel there wouldn't even have been the 6000. Brighton is quite close to me, the promotion of their team is causing a lot of excitement. I am not a Brighton fan but I am pleased to see them growing, I definitely think they are 'Premier League' ready, they are in the Premier League on merit, I expect them to do better than Newcastle United next season (congrats to Newcastle on their promotion too), I would like to see Huddersfield as the 'other' promoted team, Huddersfield won the title three times (I think) in the 1920's but they haven't been this high in the leagues for FORTY FIVE years! What a great story their return would be!
well they built Falmer and it was completed on the heels of their promotion to the Championship season. It seats 30K ... they drew 20K their first season in the second tier as they finished 10th. They drew 26K finishing 4th the following season, 24K finishing 6th after that, drew 25K finishing 20th and then 25K again last year as they finished 3rd. Seems as though $$$$ and shiny new stadium helped just as much as the "chase"
You think they would still be pulling in 20,000+ if they were only able to float around in the 4th tier? I can answer that question for you...................no!
If they were destined to stay an insignificant fourth rate club forever though then perhaps they would not have, they also wouldn't have their stadium now and they most certainly wouldn't be attracting 30,000+ supporters now, luckily for them they had the opportunity of promotion.
There were 6000 because they didn't have a stadium and were renting a small venue. Their best gate ever was actually more than their current capacity allows. I've already acknowledged that when promotion is on the horizon, gates pick up. However, despite this being their second year in a row chasing promotion, their attendance was averaging just 87% of capacity at the turn of the year according to this: http://www.bha.vitalfootball.co.uk/article.asp?a=575612 Don't get me wrong though. This IS a great story and Brighton does have a dedicated fan base who have been through a lot.
87% or not, this year is the highest average attendance BHA have EVER had, next year they will beat it, there will be larger 'away' attendance, as you know most of the missing13% was due to away tickets not being sold.
The complaint is that four MLS teams have moved/died/taken a breather over the course of 20 years. That's an all-time record for stability in an American soccer league. That wouldn't even be a bad record for Mexico. The premise is that promotion and relegation would have given these teams a...how can I put this..."safe space" until they could get back on their feet. Except three out of the four teams we're talking about didn't finish last. Two of them actually had the best record in MLS. On the other hand, we would have sent down teams that did not need to regroup. Every single year. This is like treating tuberculosis with amputation - except you're cutting off the legs of healthy patients and leaving the unhealthy ones to cough to death. But let's continue to indulge the fanciful premise. If only the Mutiny, Fusion, Quakes and Chivas USA had been able to gambol about in the lower reaches until more favorable winds. Kind of weird, then, that nobody took advantage of those teams' disappearances to form new teams. The Rowdies didn't reboot until 2010. The Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area didn't have a pro team until 2006 - unfortunately, it was run by Traffic Sports. The temporary voids in San Jose and anti-Galaxy Los Angeles were not filled with professional teams. It's almost as if being relegated would have been a death sentence, and would have done nothing to change the economic realities behind those moves. But, if that were the case, then the entire theory that teams should be promoted and relegated based on something besides economic realities would be called into question. Must be an evil cartel.
Whitehead held 8850 .... they didn't have an avg above 7400 from '93-'11 (with the '11 season being the only one above 7K). No, they most certainly were not. Yeah I know right .... NOBODY without promotion gets sweet stadiums built in the 3rd or 4th tier: and without the possibility of promotion we've matched their attendance numbers up to the point they got the new stadium.
EVERY home ticket at EVERY game at the Withdean was sold out, I know this because I know somebody that worked there, unlike in the US segregation means that un-sold away tickets remain unsold, also segregation means that capacity can not always be met. Even the 'top' clubs are sometimes under capacity because not all away tickets have been sold.
That doesn't account for the disparity in att VS capacity. http://www.efl.com/global/section5.aspx ^ 34.2.1 Each Club must make provision for at least 2,000 visiting supporters at every home match or such number as represents 10% of the Club’s certified capacity, if less than 2,000. 10% of 8850 .... is 885. No, the away allotment does NOT make the math work to BHA selling out Withdean.
It certainly does, there were loads of safety issues there, they tried to increase capacity but health and safety meant that they couldn't have more than around 6,500, the stadium itself isn't even a football stadium and is woefully inadequate, there are things that need to be put in place before you are allowed to increase your matchday attendance, this is why Stamford Bridge has to have so much alteration before they can increase capacity (it has more to do with access and exits than simple seat numbers). Besides it makes no difference to the fact that they wouldn't be in a nice big stadium playing in front of 30'000ish fans now without the opportunity of promotion.
Indeed. Withdean was also extended with more temporary seating at some point, perhaps when they briefly played at the second level before Falmer was built. You can't simply look at the last capacity and say that they played under capacity in earlier seasons, especially with the safety and access issues involved at Withdean. I'm not convinced they ever got permission to use the actual stated final capacity of the stadium. Segregation can also mean that the "away" allocation can exceed what is required by the Football League and Premier League. For example, if there is no plausible way to provide segregation within a stand, the entire stand may be given to away supporters, even if that is in excess of the minimums required. Given the issues at Withdean, it's certainly possible that that came into play too.
No, it's not. Because of the closed nature of the league with single entity and cartel admission fees, the league inevitably put its own interests first. And that is one of the issues with such leagues, namely that a perceived weak team impacts the whole league in general. Whereas with pro/rel, it's largely moot.
Their average over the season is 91.9% of their highest crowd (which I suspect was pretty much their effective segregated capacity). Presumably most but not all of that "missing" 8.1% was away tickets.
You're right on the away fans impacting attendance. However, they'd have to have pretty much 0 away fans to account for that difference. A point I've been making for some time now. It's a myth that pro/rel is "the essence of the game". If it was, people would support their team at every level, rather than hopping on and off with their fluctuating fortunes. Unless I'm misunderstanding the term, all phoenix clubs are in reality, separate from their predecessors. They're just new clubs set up or adopted by the fan base of the defunct club to replace it. So that's why I said they "kind of" phoenix-ed. They didn't go via the usual process and in reality, they technically just started supporting a different club, but they did then change its identity to match the old Maidstone and became a replacement in the eyes of their fans. This is all semantics though. I see your point. It's an oversimplification. The teams we're discussing were raised over two points: 1) The intervention of the league as a whole when a team has difficulties. Namely: -- a) How the Leyton Orient situation would be handled -- b) The concept that MLS will first attempt to aid and turn around a troubled franchise 2) Relegation facilitating the continued existence of troubled clubs and the contingency of "phoenix-ing". I see it like this: 1) If Leyton Orient had been in MLS, then assuming that the Becchetti takeover even went ahead, the league would likely have stepped in fairly quickly, based on what we've seen in the past. You mentioned earlier that this ought to not happen until such time as an owner for example, fails to pay wages.The thing is, due to the structure of MLS, this would be highly unlikely to happen. The majority of players salaries are paid by the league. As you pointed out with the teams in question, the folding of a team doesn't result in the players losing their jobs either. They were disbursed to other clubs and even if the players wound up being waived, their contracts are still honored. Onto the club "going away". I'm going to use some artistic license and transpose Leyton Orient into an MLS setting. Their attendances tend to run in the 4k-5.5k range, which is roughly a little below average for the divisions they play in, somewhat short of capacity. So a Houston Dynamo. I'm going to credit them with their storied history and support handing down through the generations. I see no reason why MLS would want to contract that team, especially as they were performing fine prior to the change in ownership, and said ownership has been identified as the issue. Nor would I see any reason for an incoming owner perceiving their identity as anything but an asset. So basically, the club would simply be sold. With CUSA, the need for a new venue was identified as they shared with LA Galaxy, which was seen as a potential issue with cultivating a separate identity. Orient has their own home, so that's not an issue and would likely mitigate the need for any hiatus. 2) The three teams in question were struggling, despite the safeguards and support of the single entity system. Despite having their salaries centrally paid (especially as the Florida teams existed prior to the DP era) the clubs weren't drawing well enough to cover their costs. Now in Miami's case, their issues were not reflected by their performances on the field of play, so they wouldn't have been relegated. In the case of the other two teams, assuming they found themselves in identical circumstances in a pro/rel league, we've seen ample evidence that a drop in level would be highly unlikely to result in an attendance boost. In fact it would likely see a decline, given that their short histories probably hadn't garnered large volumes of hardcore fans willing to watch them play at a lower level. There's little there to suggest that their financial situation would improve or that the drop in level would provide a regrouping opportunity. So it's likely they'd have gone bust. The phoenix route, I've already been over several times. That event is normally brought about by a dedicated historic fan base that can maintain such a team. As the issue here is in part a dwindling fan base and there is a lack of major history, it's doubtful that a phoenix-ing would occur. As I've said repeatedly: if such a fan base existed, they likely wouldn't have run into such issues in the first place. Finally, I don't see the collective nature of MLS as an "issue" necessarily. There are pros and cons, just as there are with pro/rel. While a financially struggling team may be removed for the health of the league as a whole, there will likely be far more effort made to remedy the situation and safeguard their future. That's on top of the existing mechanisms designed to minimize such a situation occurring in the fist place.