This reads to me like you're speculating I could be less likely to have "unwavering" support if United were more prone to relegation... I still keep tabs on a 9th tier English club and got into the LA Galaxy during the worst period of their history (I bought my first full season tickets in the wake of the 2008 season, after attending several games that year). I'm claiming that around 40 clubs were promoted to First Division in the 25 years prior to the Premier League. My general point was that the league was less competitive than it once was. You think it's just because of the Champions League. If there were 37% more individual teams promoted to the top flight between 1967-68 & 1991-92, teams generally had longer spells in the top flight than in the EPL era and the same amount of teams played in the top flight, then clearly some of those promotees were dropping from the top flight. That set of factors points to far more clubs going up and holding their own, not just as relegation strugglers but as top flight clubs in general and larger teams were more at risk of going down. Fine. 25 Years in EPL: 6 Champions 13 Top 3 finishers 25 Promoted Teams 39 Relegated Teams (out of possible 76) Last 25 Years of FL D1 as top flight: 8 Champions 18 Top 3 Finishers 40 Promoted Teams 40 Relegated Teams (70 possible) Last 10 Years of EPL 4 Champs 7 Top 3 Finishers Last 10 Years of FL D1 as top flight 4 Champs 13 Top 3 Finishers I got that. Many of those other countries are also on different scales of revenue, so the pattern should still be fairly prevalent. However, looking beyond "England", the type of dominance we see back home has been common in other leagues for much of their histories. Let's examine that cementation, shall we? Of England's big 4-6, you've got Liverpool and Arsenal that have traditionally been at the top end since before the inception of the EPL. Man United were already hugely commercially successful before UCL money ramped up. I agree that in each of these cases, the UCL hasn't hurt their capacity to remain toward the top of the table. At the same time, Liverpool are far from untouchable by the rest of the table, which they should be if what you claim is true. Chelsea and Man City were bankrolled to success. The UCL didn't put them at the top. In Spain, Barca and Real Madrid have been dominant forces for generations. Their own TV deals put tehm well ahead of the chasing pack in recent seasons regardless of UCL money. Meanwhile, you've had the likes of Sevilla and Valencia who have qualified for the UCL on a regular basis but have not been permanently cemented in the top 4.
No I'm pointing out, for the fourth time, that following a gloryhunter club means your experiences are rather different than if you followed a team where relegation was a feasibility. Better draft choices... yippee! Your information is incorrect. In 25 years of the Premier League, 39 different teams were promoted. So to summarize (I didn't check your FL figures, but they look correct): 25 years of PL - 39 different promoted teams, 39 different relegated teams. Last 25 years of FL D1 - 40 different promoted teams, 40 different relegated teams. In my book, that's called "no difference". No disagreement from me about the cementation of the top of the league. The consistency of European qualification has become unprecedented since the CL money started rolling in. So saying that the CL "hasn't harmed" those traditionally big teams as a gross understatement. In the days when only the champion qualified, it wasn't possible for European competition to make such a large difference to the finances of a particular team because (i) repeated European competition was less likely; and (ii) there wasn't the money there anyway. And, yes, Chelsea and Man City have bankrolled themselves into being CL teams. But, as the link I posted pointed out: "However, this table also highlights a core element of the strategy of the nouveaux riches clubs, i.e. spending for success, as we find Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City in sixth and seventh places with €228 million and €222 million respectively." Would that money have been speculated without the reward of consistent CL revenues as the likely result? I doubt it.
Chelsea were a Champions League club before Abramovich bought them - just saying, people seem to forget this little fact
I'm not 'moving the goalpost', were Newcastle United in the Premier League last year - answer NO, therefore they are new to the Premier League this season, you can't 'ban' clubs from promotion on the premise that they've been there before! How bloody ridiculous would that be. In your world you want everything to start afresh every year, what would the point be in building your club if every year you simply rip it up and start again? What would be the point of sport? Perhaps we should just forget about team building at all and simply 'draw lots'? Or lets just forget about the football completely and simply toss a coin? Or we can simply call the richest team Champions?
1999-2000 and 2003-2004, after Bates invested so much, the club got into financial trouble that forced him to sell it to Abramovitch. It's not like they were household names in the CL and as far as I can tell not ever in the pre CL tournement EC1.
In a closed league, I guess "start afresh" would mean reapplying for membership every year with the "successful" teams paying a cartel admission fee afresh.
Have they ever been in the Premier League - answer YES. They aren't new to the EPL, they're back in it. There's a difference. Never said you could or should. Very ... which is why I didn't say it. No, I LIKE that every team gets a fresh start each season ... though you don't have to "rip up" your club to do so. Though, pro/rel certainly does more "ripping up" of clubs .... Well, there is a correlation with money spent and trophies won/table placement ....
Okay, I (hopefully) counted properly this time. Between 1967-68 and 1991-92, the last 25 years of the Football League Division One being the top flight in England, this is how the newly promoted teams fared: Immediately relegated: 13 Finished in the bottom 5: 23 Finished in the top 5: 9 Won the league: 1 In the 25 years since the Premier League began: Immediately relegated: 33 Finished in the bottom 5: 42 Finished in the top 5: 3 Won the league: 0 Other info: Size of League: 22 clubs: 1967-68 to 1986-87, 1991-92 to 1994-95 21 clubs: 1987-88 20 clubs: 1988-89 to 1990-92, 1995-96 to present Relegation places: 2 places: 1967-68 to 1973-74 3 places: 1974-75 to 1994-95, 1995-96 to present 4 places: 1994-95 3 places and a playoff spot: 1986-87 Had there been three relegation places prior to 1975, two more teams (Norwich in '73 and Coventry in '68) would have gone down immediately.
EDIT: On thinking about how to cater fairly for the larger size of the top flight for much of the old FLD1 era presented, I went back and counted the bottom 6 for those years (bottom 5 would be 1/4 of a 20 team league, 5.5 would be 1/4 of 22, rounded up to 6). A total of 26 teams finished in the bottom 6. Applied at the other end, an additional 4 teams finished in 6th placed, making 13 teams in the top 6. This approach didn't change the EPL era counts for the seasons in which they had 22 teams, nor did it impact the totals for the one season with 21 teams.
Well, yes, but of course we don't know how a third promoted team would have done in the 8 of 25 seasons (there were also only 2 promoted in 90/91). Additionally, I suspect another factor is at play, namely the promotion playoff. Only 3 of the 25 Football League seasons had a potentially relegated team that could have been promoted through the previous season's playoff. Since the Premier League era started, 16 of the 33 relegated have been the previous season's playoff winner. Yes, some of those finished third - although arguably given little benefit accrues to the 3rd place finisher over the other playoff teams the goal is to be in a playoff spot, not specifically to be third - but it does seem like a disproportionate share of immediately relegated team are the playoff winners. We've gone from a situation where 50 years ago the third placed team couldn't be promoted to one where the sixth-placed team can. So although there's clearly been an increase in immediately relegated teams, at least some of it is due to the two factors discussed above.
Actually, there were four. Oldham, West Ham, Sheffield Wednesday and Notts County. There were only two relegated from Division One. Those are interesting points, though it's worth noting that in the Premier League era, the playoff winner has finished above at least one of the top 2 the following season, on 11 occasions. On 9 occasions, the Football League Champions have finished lower than the other two promoted teams. 9 times, the Football League Champions finished highest of the promotees. 9 times, lowest. 8 times, the Football League runners up have finished highest. 4 times lowest! 6 times, the playoff winner has finished highest. 14 times, lowest. Number of relegations: FLC Winners: 9 Runners Up: 10 PO Winners: 14 So you're right, there's a modest correlation there, regarding the playoff winners. If you discount those, we have 19 relegations (though we're also down to 2 top 5 finishes). However, we also need to apply this to the 25 years prior to the EPL. Discounting the relegated playoff winners from 89-90 to 91-92, reduces the relegated teams to 11. So we go from 13 vs 33 to 11 vs 19, so still a lesser but still significant increase. It's also worth noting that the the rate of immediate relegations was already high by the time the UCL had its first season of allowing league runners up into the competition in 1998. In fact, that very season, the three promoted clubs all went down.
Hmm, I got 16 playoff winners immediately relegated, including the playoff winner from the last season before the forming of the Premier League. Id' have been surprised had there been any correlation between CL expansion and immediate relegations. The CL expansion helped cement the top, however.
The last playoff winner the year before the Premier League was Blackburn. I make it 15(?). I tallied Bolton as a runner up the season that only 2 clubs were promoted, so that was my error.
Nevertheless they were in the Champions League BEFORE Abramovich took over, in fact if they weren't then Abramovich wouldn't have even bought them.
Yes, but had he not, the chances of them breaking into the Man United/Arsenal duopoly at the time, were very slim indeed. That's the point.
But the argument was that the league below the UCL qualifiers was as competitive as ever. Even if you discount the playoff winners, the league has still had 18 teams relegated versus 11 previously. Want to account for the extra relegation place and the additional playoff teams? Okay - lets exclude the seasons where there were only two relegation places (67-68 to 73-74) and only count the top 2 teams that were promoted automatically. If I'm counting right, that makes 37 teams total from 74-75 to 91-92 and 49 from 92-93 to 2016-17. Of the 37 FLD1 era, 7 were relegated. Of the 49 in the EPL era, 18 were relegated. If we take the ratio of 0.19 relegated teams per season prior to the EPL and apply it to the number of automatically promoted clubs of the EPL era (again, 49 clubs), we get about 9. So automatically promoted top 2 teams, have been relegated about twice as often in the EPL era. Expanding on your point about the playoff winners increasing the odds of a potentially weaker promotee moving to the EPL each season, we should theoretically see a few more automatic promotees stay up. This is because the odds of a relegation spot being taken by an overwhelmed playoff winner are higher.
It is safe to say that Chelsea were one of the 4 best clubs when Abramovich took over so with the prem getting that 4th spot they should have been in a strong position to consistently qualify for champs league and being a London club would be in position to grow commercially as well. Assuming Arsenal still went into their period of austerity to pay off the Emirates then Chelsea still would have been in the strongest position to challenge Manyoo even without Roman. Not sure what this has to do with pro/rel though.
If the previous owner was having cash problems, I think it is fairly certain that Chelsea would have fallen back to it's previous form once the cash flow had been cut off...
The season before Abramovich took over, Chelsea qualified for the Champions League as the fourth placed team. This was only the second time they'd qualified. The previous time was in 1998-99 as the third placed team. Between those two seasons, they'd finished 5th once and 6th twice, so I disagree that it was safe to say they were a top four team. By 2003, they were in the financial sh1t and it's unlikely that they could have afforded to maintain the level they were at the time, let alone the team they were after spending £100m on players during RA's first summer. After all, Newcastle and Leeds were qualifying for the UCL more regularly and look where they both ended up.
By 2003-04 Leeds was imploding financially and Newcastle was going backwards with Robson and Shearer feeling their age. Both of these were independent of Chelsea's cash. And Liverpool ended up 4th that year on 60 points. Literally closer to the relegation zone than the top. Basically I am saying that it's reasonable that even without the investment of Roman that Chelsea could/should have been able to beat 60 points. Particularly if you see the playing squad from that 2002-03 side. It's not like the cupboard was bare. Now I personally don't know how bad the finances were. Is it proven that Chelsea was in a Leeds position completely mortgaging the future? Or was it a case of Bates selling out knowing Roman could take the club places he never could.
My point on those teams was that Champions League revenues didn't allow them to cement a top 4 place, so by no means can we assume that Chelsea would have become a perennial contender based purely on that, even if they could have sustained their 2002-03 performance (and it's by no means certain they could). I don't think they were quite in Leeds territory of financial dire straits but they did have substantial debt and were going to have to take serious steps to avoid defaulting. As this article explains, they were certainly going to have to scale back their squad and curtail the ambitious signings. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2005/oct/17/newsstory.sport9
This exactly; although of course we will never know what would have happened, we can argue until the cows come home but there is simply no way of knowing where their journey would have gone, who knows they might have more than one Champions League if Abramovich HADN'T bought them! Hey a richer man than Abramovich 'may' have come along and bought the club, we will NEVER know,