I didnt say all cup competitions are a mockery! The FA cup is a wonderful competition (along with countless cup competitions across the world), the FA cup winners though are NOT claimed as the 'best' team in England, never have been, never will be. The 'best' team in England are the league Champions, there is nothing 'wrong' with cup competitions, Ive loved it when my club has won them, you cant claim to be the best team with knockout football though, we all know that occasionally inferior teams go through and this is a charm in its own way, league Champions is the holy grail.
Not remotely what I said. But coupled with Liverpool, Man United/City, etc. you have at the very least a sizable minority. And the longer that Villa is irrelevant, the stronger the pull for these superclubs. Will Villa Park continue to fill up? Sure - but 30k through the turnstiles is really different than any semblance of demand for seeing them on TV. The further you are in the W Midlands from Villa Park, the less likely the appeal, since they suck, are never on TV, you're not going to see them live (because it's expensive and you have no connection), and there are better choices. This is incredibly common in the U.S., as well: you look at teams like the Atlanta Falcons or the Tampa Bay Rays - these teams are undoubtedly the single most popular team in their city in their respective sports (certainly passively), but not nearly the extent that the Eagles or the Yankees or the Cowboys are in their respective markets. In Tampa, for example, you're going to see Yankees and Red Sox fans show up in equal or greater numbers when their team comes to town. And, more importantly, these teams have near zero following outside of their markets (unlike the Yankees, Cowboys, Steelers, Lakers, etc.) People compartmentalize: you might have been brought up with Villa or West Brom or Wolves or whatever, but while they're down (especially if they're out of the Premier League) you pick up a winner (most people are, in some fashion or another, star f*ckers at heart) to follow, and if that "winner" joins some closed superleague, there's no real conflict of interest. Outside of cup competitions, they can't meet. There is no West Midland club that would ever be invited to a superleague (at least, not by today's standards), do you honestly think that A) the clubs that were in the SL wouldn't market the living hell out of Britain's second largest city and B) this wouldn't have an effect?
The MLS Cup determines the MLS champions, not the best team. When the Giants won the classic 2008 Super Bowl they beat the best team in NFL. In 2018 St Helens ran away with the regular season and dominated the Super 8s but failed to reach the Grand Final. St Helens were the best team but Wigan were the champions.
They won't need to. Manchester United/City fans aren't going to drop their club by joining a superleague just like fans don't leave if their club gets promoted from the National League to League Two.
A superleague would draw fans from all over the world. If some local fans stopped going to matches, for whatever reason, it wouldn't be too hard to replace them with wealthy foreign fans. Soccer tourism is already a thing (I have friends who've done it when visiting the UK- there are companies that sell ticket packages designed for foreign fans). It would go into overdrive if there was a superleague with fans all over the world. And the point? Money. It always come down to money. It's kind of a natural law- teams love to push out working class and middle class fans if they can, and replace them with the wealthy.
But that's just the point I'm making they ARE going to drop their club! Certainly the English ones anyway! And unfortunately for Manchester United it's their Englsh fans that are the important ones because they are the ones going through the turnstiles! Man United won't last long without beating part of the MUCH MUCH wider picture that is the English league system, it may be hard for a Manchester United supporter to understand if they are in Bejing but without the support of Non Utd fans in the UK there would be no Man Utd. However 'big' United like to think they are if they are cut adrift from the English public they will not last long, unless of course they move to say Mumbai of course.....but then they won't actually be Manchester United will they?
You will find that it's an awful lot easier to get Man City tickets if the are playing Dortmund than it is if they are playing Everton, like I've said for me (and all the other Chelsea fans at Stamford Bridge) it's far, far, far more important/satisfactory beating Spurs or dirty Leeds than it will EVER be beating Madrid or Paris!
No they won't. Club > League and all that. Maybe you give up your seat. Abramovich has got 200,000 British citizens in a 5 mile radius of Stamford Bridge to sell it to.
This comment shows how completely clueless you are. Those games were critical to at least three of the teams involved. For example, Villa now have some hope of avoiding relegation and conversely it looks like Burnley are being dragged down into relegation mire. A win for Burnley and things would look very different.
Playoffs work well if they're structured right, like in the NFL. 12 out of 32 qualifying with a significant home field advantage built in. Some but not an overwhelming devaluation of the regular season. The NBA, otoh, has playoffs that really do tend to make the regular season little more than an "exhibition" season at times.
No club is bigger than the league, Chelsea wouldn't get 40000 paying customers every week if there was no West Ham, Arsenal, Spurs or Palace etc. If Chelsea play Spurs their could easily be 60000 fans from both clubs in attendance, how many people would be coming over from Lisburn for a Chelsea v Benfica game on a wet Wednesday in December? Did you see that the Spanish decided to move some Super cup games to Saudi Arabia? Valencia sold TWENTY SIX tickets Athletic Madrid FIFTY! They think the stadium will be 9% full!
I know! Can you imagine what it will be like next season if dirty Leeds go up! Now there is a ticket I would do anything to get! We gained promotion once on the penultimate game of the season by beating dirty Leeds 4-0 at the Bridge, leaving them behind in Div 2 (championship), at the final whistle we invaded the pitch in celebration - they ripped up benches and put them through our 'new' electronic scoreboard! :-D
MLB probably has the "best" system: (mostly) balanced schedules within divisions, minimal number of teams, series-based playoffs. It also fits well with the MLB season. In NBA and NHL - yes, there are too many teams in the postseason, but more importantly there are just too many damn games in the regular season
Newcastle? Bloody thousands! I don't think Newcastle EVER fail to sell their whole allegation of away tickets! Newcastle is probably one if the worst clubs you could have picked to try and make that point! lol
On a Wednesday? Color me skeptical, it's a 5 hour drive one way. But, fine - maybe thousands of Geordies had the Wednesday and Thursday off, anyway - Burnley, then. It's roughly the same distance from London to Lisbon as it is from New York to Miami - which is generally considered a "natural rivalry", btw. Away fans go to Dolphins/Jets games.
Seriously Newcastle are actually famous for their travelling support, I promise you that - they travel in HUGE numbers, always have. You won't see an empty seat in an away end ANYWHERE in the country if that away end has Newcastle in it. A VERY passionate and VERY loyal fan base even if they never seem to get a team they deserve because of it!
Our knockout football FOLLOWS THE SEASON ... it isn't done INSTEAD OF IT Do you honestly not grasp that? We do the season to determine the best teams Then we take the best teams and have them pay Then when there's only two left they pay for the championship It's all connected and run in succession. Each stage is directly dependent on the preceding one and is determined by it.
OK, now make the worst 3 teams get relegated, really bring some consequences into it. It's not a disappointing season unless there are lots of inconsolable small boys in floods of tears :-D - often adults too!
Tell that to the clubs that just went shy off the title the last few years. It's not like every season one club goes into the winterstop with a huge headstart to the second one. Plus you only know it at the end if those losses were affordable. It's effing stupid to go from that premise from the start. Liverpool had a record points last season, but it wasnot enough to win the title. Iirc they had one lost match!
That's funny. In Europe the viewers for CL matches in the KO stages are dropping, while these are the matches one will see in the SL to be. Reason given, the predictability of the same old suspects year after year. So what is chasing viewers away in Europe from the CL should by magical thinking draw viewers to the SL. Worldwide appeal? https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/drop-in-us-tv-audience-for-champions-league-final/ The SL will be CL boring multiplied by 20.