What! Are you suggesting that Luton or Burnley are unsafe because they have less supporters than Leeds! LOL What makes you think Leicester, Leeds and Southampton supporters have the 'right' to 'higher quality football' than fans of Sheffield Wednesday?? I repeat the aim of football is to win games, the team that amasses the most points will be crowned as 'the best football team in England' based on you know.............football - the amount of fans they have is irrelevant! If it makes you feel better then Manchester United 'win' the 'we have the highest attendance' competition and Spurs win the 'we have the best stadium' competition but Manchester City are the football league champions of England! Next season Leicester City will be playing in a division more 'apt' to their teams level of ability! If Brighton were stuck in the 4th tier of English football forever then they would be stuck with 4 tier crowds forever!
And if Spurs were stuck in the 4th tier they would be stuck with 4th tier fans forever. Don't get angry at me because your system is counter-productive. Luton will now get to build, in a hurry, a Premiership-level facility. Let's see how that works for them
EXACTLY! Luckily for Spurs they have been one of the most successful clubs in English football history, 87 years of top flight football means that they have accumulated lots of fans! Doesn't mean their fans are 'more deserving' than Luton fans for Premier League football though does it! If you can give me ONE good reason why a Spurs fan is more 'entitled' to Premier League football than a Luton fan I'd be glad to hear it? Luton can spend their money as they so wish, they actually have a new stadium planned already, being built whether they got promoted or not:- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-65718990 Alternatively they can hope to scrape by in Kenilworth Road and spend all their money on players if they want to, its up to them, as long as they win enough football matches next season they will stay up, new stadium or no new stadium. Ultimately their success or failure will be down to them. Meanwhile 100+ other clubs are trying to succeed too, its competition. Leicester have a nice stadium, perhaps they should have spent their Premier League riches on better players too?
This season they played the best football in the Championship, the fact that Kompany has signed an extension is good news for them, I reckon they are going to be a different prospect to the Burnley that got relegated season before last.
lolcopter Exactly. Achieving nothing for decades but availing themselves of the structural advantages of top division play is better for a club than going up and down levels, even with the occasional title. Your zero-sum mindset is holding you back. It shouldn't be "Spurs or Luton." It should be "Spurs - yes or no? Everton - yes or no? Leicester - yes or no? Blackburn -" and so forth. There's not a hard limit, let alone a hard limit of 20. And for some reason I'm not seeing any mention that Luton were a first division team the year before the Premier League was formed. It's almost as if one bad season at the wrong time has overly significant consequences under pro-rel. But promotion and relegation makes the competition unfair. If you want to think that Leicester, Luton, Wrexham and Manchester City are pro/rel success stories, great. I prefer a system that is fair and competitive.
The pausing of relegation in Rugby Union in England has seen the collapse of two top division clubs, and potentially a third if London Irish don't find a buyer in the next two days. And that's a division that also has a salary cap. I'm not saying the lack or pro/rel is the reason, just that ending pro/rel alone won't be a cure for overspending. The mentality of owners is around success on the field, not making a profit. The league needs to bring in tougher FFP rules, but ones based around not running up debt than about competitive balance. Allowing clubs to run up losses of £39 million over three years is far too slack. Allowing owners to gamble by loaning clubs money should not be allowed. In short, they shouldn't be allowed to spend money they haven't got, and have no prospect of getting. If you want to spend more, you need to increase your income, by attracting new fans, new sponsors, new revenue streams... And the funny things is that a pay squeeze at championsip level (and below) would result in virtually no reduction in quality, because the overwhelming majority of those players would have nowhere to go to earn more money. The premier league could give Championship clubs another £10 million each, and the upshot would just be the same clubs fighting over the same pool of players, and just paying them more, and those clubs losing just as much money as now. Every single increase in income in the past 60 years has simply resulted in players being paid more. The only real difference is that the premier league can now sign genuine star players from abroad, whereas they'd have gone to Italy 30 years ago.
Spurs have 87 years as a top flight team, that makes them one of the most successful football clubs in England! If you are interested they are in fact 7th in the all time English football league table. https://www.worldfootball.net/alltime_table/eng-premier-league/ As for Luton getting relegated the year before the Premier League was formed so what!? What gives Luton the right to Premier League football over say Sheffield Wednesday exaclty!!? Also it wasnt 'one bad season' either was it! Luton had every chance of Promotion the following year and every year since! You still haven't told me why Spurs fans deserve Premier League football more than Luton fans? Also perhaps you can tell me exactly why pro/rel is unfair?? The Premier League is open to all - the clubs that win the most football matches will end up in the Premier League and that is the whole point of sporting competition isn't it??
The thing is that would be great for those 20 (or 32 or whatever) clubs. What I don't get is the implication that it will somehow help the rest too. It's presented as a cure for their problems, yet does nothing to help them. I mean, yes, it probably would free them from the spectre of overseas consortiums looking for promotion and a quick sale, but better FFP rules would stop such gambling, and make clubs less attractive for such investors. I mean, I get the US take where the top division is the only one that matters, and making that into a high profitable set of franchises is the goal, but that's helped by there being nothing of any value outside to start off with. There is not a single minor league club anywhere in US sports that as it stands, could be viable in the majors. That is not the case here, even for a club like Luton, who have already spent 16 years in the top division - the last being a 10 year spell just before the premier league kicked in. From the US perspective, excluding minor league clubs represents no loss at all. Again, that just isn't that case here.
It has nothing to do with what has happened in the last 5 years. It goes back all the way to the sport turning pro in 1995. You have a handful of clubs, notably Leicester, Bath and Gloucester that were already run professionally behind the scenes and had their own stadiums and strong ties to the community. Then you have the hobby clubs, like Irish, Wasps and Harlequins, which have been struggling for relevance, although in Harlequins case they didn't move around the country looking for a fan base. The best thing the league could do is restructure around it's major teams like the NRL did in the 1990s and is apparently doing again.
I think Harlequins, who sell out most of their games, and can usually pull around 70,000 for their Christmas game 'over the road' are bit more stable that Irish and Wasps. Harlequins' issues are partly due to being unable to expand The Stoop, due to council restrictions around the lack of parking. Saracens are also pretty established now, mainly because they were able to find a London base, and the fact that they miraculous persuade their star-studded teams to accept low enough salaries to fit under the cap every year (except one). Oddly I feel if there was a league that should have scrapped pro/rel, it was that division, simply because the clubs outside it just don't have the infrastructure. I don't think it would have entirely prevented overspending though.
Spurs fans started following a glamor club, with world-class players and spend a fortune on tickets just to watch home games. Most Luton fans didn't start supporting their team because they were in the top-flight, or had world-class players. In fact they were probably quite happy to be in the Championship. Following their team against the best teams in the world for a couple of seasons is a bonus. So in that sense Spurs fans deserve a Premier League team more than Luton fans because that's what they're invested in. In fact there are probably thousands of Lutonians who chose Spurs or Arsenal over the Hatters. I liken it to Featherstone Rovers in English rugby league. The coal mines around Featherstone were a gold mine for talent allowing them to compete against wealthier clubs. The financial requirements of competing in the Super League really prevents Featherstone from competing but their fans are OK with that. When they had the chance to merge with Castleford they said no.They'd rather be independent at a lower level. And fans in the area that want to watch Super League have other choices.
The draft is pretty irrelevant to MLS. The occasional, Jack Harrison, Daryl Dike or Tajon Buchanan may show up but most draft picks are squad players. MLS should get 30 draft picks and let the USL championship take the rest.
I've said for a couple of years now the draft should be eliminated and they should turn it into "each team gets one claim" like the allocation list. Then in a few years they can probably eliminate that too.
I don't they have 70,000 supporters but they've cleverly exploited the situation they're in and created an 'occasion'.
But Luton fans have been paying good money to watch second rate football, you could argue that after 30 years of hurt they 'deserve' to watch their team in the Premier League more no? The reality is neither Spurs fans nor Luton fans 'deserve' Premier League football any more than the other! Perhaps Hartlepool fans 'deserve' it more? Perhaps a Plymouth fan 'deserves' it more because he's bought a season ticket for the last 30 years? Maybe Newcastle fans deserve it more because they have to travel further distances to watch their club! Fact is there is NO club or clubs fans that 'deserve' Premier League football above ANY other fans or club. As for Luton fans no doubt they will pay more money for their tickets next season. You think Luton fans are 'happier' in the Championship!!! Are you sure! LOL https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/202...-town-orange-luton-plans-huge-promotion-party You won't find ONE Luton fan that didn't want to go up and even if you did they'd be 40'000 that are delirious with promotion!
FC Cincinnati was a laughing stock with three consecutive MLS seasons (2019, 2020 and 2021) in last place. Now, they currently are in first place in the overall table. They drafted Roman Celentano in 2022 which, clearly, has been a huge help. However that's only one draftee out of a roster of 23 or so non-drafted players. The SuperDraft is a mere afterthought for most MLS teams now, as most players (besides a handful) aren't good enough to play in MLS so they play in the USL or get sent to MLS Next Pro.
It's still useful in one sense, which is as a second chance for players who fell through the cracks. Thing is, there's a reason why most of the top draft picks in recent years have been foreign players. The best American players in college soccer are mostly MLS academy products at this point, and can be signed as homegrown players right up through their senior season, so with few exceptions, the American players available in the draft are players who have already been passed over multiple times by the club that developed them.
Luton Town will be the 50th team to play in the Premier League since its formation, the first to be promoted all the way from the National League and the first to have a ground with a capacity under 11k. And achieved with one of the lowest player budgets in the Championship. All in all one of the best sports stories so far this year.
Much further down the pyramid, two phoenix teams that were formed from the ashes of two team - Bury and Macclesfield Town - that have featured in this thread, are on the up. Macclesfield has won back to back promotions and will play at the seventh level next season. They averaged over 3k a game at the eighth level this season. Bury AFC narrowly missed promotion from level 9 and, more importantly, the feud between them and a rival Bury phoenix team has been resolved.
I'm in two group chats with Leicester fans One - Mixture of expats and Americans The other - Friends I have known for going on 30 years. One group chat -Is what it is. Deserve to be relegated based on the way we have played. The other - This wasn't supposed to happen. Whining and complaining. The conclusion I have drawn ? Follow a team where you are from or where you live. You get more out of it.