This is probably a thread for England but since Pro/Rele is talked about in here so much I put it here. My statement and question is this. Has anyone noticed that on the bottom of the Championship Table in England sits Southampton, Norwich and Charlton with Watford, Derby and Crystal Palace not too far behind. All of these teams not too long ago were in the Premiership. My question is; what happens to teams once they get promoted then relegated back to the championship? How come all of them seem to go through some years of serious mediocrity? I mean Charlton and S.Hampton are about to be relegated for God's sake. Charlton is as good as gone. How do you go from getting promoted to fighting for your life in a league that you dominated a year or two before? What is it that these teams lost that suddenly made them not even good enough to be in the Championship?
It's easy. Take out tons of loans to acquire players on the chance you will be playing in Champion's League games then when you dont make them to pay off all your loans have to sell you players including Rio Ferdinand, Robbie Keane, Jon Woodgate just to name a few and then wind up in League 1 at the middle of the table constantly 4 years later. (I like run on sentences) Most teams who get promoted and then fall back the next year either get promoted right back again or take awhile to get back up. It took sunderland awhile to get promoted again and they have a fairly decent team now. The problem is the money that you get from premiership. Teams either try to use this money to stay up or save it to get back up the next year. If they use it and don't stay afloat then its hard when you don't make that much the next year. p.s. If you didn't get the run on sentence reference its Leeds United. Look it up they were top 4 team in premiership for a few years going as far and semi finals in Champions League but because of the money issue they couldn't afford all their good players.
I was well aware of who you were talking about. I followed them because of Eddie Lewis. Their demise has to be one of the worst in pro sports. But that makes sense about spending money and not having it the next year. Seems like that could make for a large exodus of your quality players.
Ya I was very surprised when I saw the list of their players who they had on their team during the early 2000s. A lot of very good names right now and they had a really good youth system but because of the money situation they had to sell them all. Selling Rio for a record which I think still stands even now for a defender. Some of their players: Rio Ferdinand Robbie Fowler Ian Harte Jimmy-Floyd Hasselbaink Robbie Kean Gary Kelly Harry Kewell Paul Robinson Alan Smith Mark Viduka Jonathan Woodgate -and others
the situation with Leeds doesn't really relate to this thread. They deserve to be where they are because they had some idiots running their club. If it wouldn't have been for their huge point deduction for going into administration, they would have been promoted last season. No newly promoted team would ever dream they could qualify for the champions league and would not try to loan their way into the top 4. Also, teams get paid twice for spending one year in the top. So you can spend big the summer you earn promotion knowing that you will get paid big tv dollars for your year in the prem, but then you also get a nice sized parachute payment if you do take the drop. Birmingham and Reading don't seem to be suffering the same prblems as the clubs mentioned in the original post, so I think its clearly a problem of those club mismanagment leading to their demise. Another case of a team beeing poorly managed is Luton who is about to fall off the face of the Earth, a team that two years ago was in the championship
the championship is a much tighter league than the premier league, with the difference between the best and worst sides being a lot less. It doesn't take the loss of that many players to turn a good side into a poor one. A lot of clubs are in debt when they go down (poor management usually) and many gamble of going straight back up. It's a very costly gamble when it fails. Teams that go down get parachute payments each year to try and cover the income gap between the divisions, but far too few clubs consider the impact of getting relegated, and are stuck with wage bills they just can't afford. They then have to let players go, often at below their market value, just to get them off the payroll. I think the transfer window doesn't help at this level, as prevents clubs from moving players on at a decent price in their haste to get rid of them, and it prevents them from getting replacements easily. The real "shock" team down there is Norwich City. They get a full house of 24,000 every single week, so managing the budget should be the easiest thing in the world, as they know pretty much exactly how much they've got coming in each year. Then again, they are probably also paying for the new stand down one side, which can't have been cheap. Stadium construction has a tradition of making or breaking teams here as it's a large proportion of the club's income going out in one lump. Luton are something of a special case due the the number of points deductions they've had for financial irregularities. If a club is docked a large number of points, it makes it hard to attract players.
also something that might be a bit underestimated is the difference in team menality. Relagation battles can become pretty emotionally draining, as players you can get used to losing and you play in a different style as you try and save a point a lot of the time. Then adjusting to all the other teams in the lower division being used to a different style of play and then you yourselves ahving to adjust your own mentality to a winning one is a difficult task. This poor financial managment crisis is a big problem over there, but I think the answer should come in the form of restricting the ammount of debt a club is allowed to carry or tie in directly the ammount of money allowed to be spent on wages and transfer to an average of the last three seasons revenue. I don't think a universal salary cap is teh answer but you can run into a system problem similar to steroids in baseball. If you are the only club taking on these risky loans it has a much higher chance of working because your team will be so much better. But then when everyone does it, almost everybody gets effed, and if you don't do it you are nearly assured of going down.
I hope you aren't saying that's what Leeds did because they were already at the top 4 or around it when they had taken these loans, they weren't newly promoted. On the other hand you are right thou, no newly promoted team would ever do that. What I was referring to is taking money that they are guaranteed to have, the parachute funds, if they fall down and invest it in bring higher caliber players to their squad. When teams do that and don't stay up it is hard for them to bounce straight back into the premiership and may take a year or two sometime longer depending on how much they spent while in the premier league.
Leeds had done well for a few years, and made their way up the table. They got to within striking distance of the top of the league, and went for a big push for it. They planned a rebuild of the stadium to bring up capacity, add in extra facilities including an arena. All these where designed to bring in new revenue streams. Problem is, rather than getting these increases in revenue streams moving, Leeds bet on league and European success, hoping that the success would drive the increases forwards. The problem is that the success did not come, and the house that Leeds built on the sand, came crashing down. If Leeds had had league and European success, then that would have given them the money they needed to service their debts, and move on with their plans. Unfortunately, the loans could not be serviced, and the plans foundered, all because Leeds overstretched themselves. As to promotion and relegation. Many clubs come up. Some manage to stay up. Look at Wigan for one! Middlesborough managed to stay up for a long time (not looking good now) and Sunderland have managed to keep up for extended periods of time, along with Bolton. Those clubs that stay up are usually the ones that dont go crazy and splurge all their money, nor are they the ones who save it all in the knowledge they are likely to go down. Those that go down then get reducing parachute payments over about 3 years. But where it hurts is the TV money. The parachute payments are great, but appearing on TV in the championship brings far less than appearing on the tv in the Premier League. Why do those that drop struggle? Well, its not all of them. If you look at the Championship, most of the top teams have previous EPL experience. Where it goes wrong is where clubs manage the money. Carlton had a few years in the EPL with some success, and began to build up, unfortunately, the revenues did not follow, then a string of results sent them tumbling, and things such as sponsorship tumbled along with them. So, now, they have EPL sized debts to sort out, but on Championship revenue streams. Therefore, they have to cut their cloth, and it shows in the current results.