I have never heard anything so stupid as the apparent proposal to abandon relegation from the Premier League.
And that's saying something when we've had proposals for a "39th game abroad", mid-winter breaks (a pet hate of mine) and Celtic and Rangers to play in the English League.
I'm not sure who's proposing such nonsense, but, at a stroke, it would render about 75% of the games in the Premier League as irrelevant. The top few would still battle for the title and places in the Europa League they later decide they'd rather not have, and the remaining dozen or so clubs would have nothing to play for in the league - ever!
And guess what? No one would want to watch: at the ground, in the pubs, on TV, or even in deepest Malaysia. It's not a recipe for sanctuary for the clubs who might fear relegation; it's a recipe for disaster.
If this is some crazy notion based on the US model of the NFL, then what should we expect next? Overtime to ensure there are no draw? 117 players on each side, 106 of whom would be on the bench (what would Carlos Tevez think of that?)? Full body armour? Renaming football to soccer?
Come on. If our American friends Stateside were so good at inventing sports, some of them might just get played outside of their own back yard, and not have "world champions" from ONE country. Football (yes, NOT soccer) CAN learn a lot from other sports (like replays in cricket, and on-pitch injury treatment in rugby, to name but two), but it should ignore nonsensical proposals from apparent foreign owners who should remember why they bought into our game in the first place.
And why should the current members of the Premier League suddenly decide to ring-fence themselves? Would it be because some of them know they're not really part of the elite? Here's a list of the real top 20 clubs, based on league positions since the war:
1 Manchester United
2 Arsenal
3 Liverpool
4 Tottenham Hotspur
5 Everton
6 Chelsea
7 Aston Villa
8 Manchester City
9 Newcastle United
10 West Ham United
11 Leeds United
12 West Bromwich Albion
13 Wolverhampton Wand.
14 Nottingham Forest
15 Sunderland
16 Leicester City
17 Middlesbrough
18 Blackburn Rovers
19 Birmingham City
20 Southampton
The other current Premier League members are placed as follows:
23 Stoke City
26 Bolton Wanderers
31 Norwich City
32 Fulham
33 QPR
53 Swansea City
80 Wigan Athletic
You know what motivates proposals like this? Greed, fear, cowardice.
Showing posts with label relegation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label relegation. Show all posts
Friday, 21 October 2011
Monday, 17 January 2011
Fourteen teams in relegation battle!
I cannot recall a season when so many teams in the Premier League have the potential to be relegated. I don't mean that they're all not very good - I mean that the lower half (and more) of the division is so tight.
Just TEN POINTS cover the teams from bottom (West Ham United with 20 points) all the way up to Bolton Wanderers in seventh place with 30 points.
Forty points is usually taken as the number you need to be safe after 38 games. Only once have more points been needed. That could happen again this seasonas points are being shared around liberally between all teams.
No team among the 14 in that ten-point zone will consider themselves safe until they are comfortably past the 40-mark point.
Let's look at a few examples:
At the bottom West Ham have 20 points from 23. They need at least another 20 from 15 games. That's seven wins from 15; they've only won four so far. Ouch.
In 17th place are Aston Villa with 22 points from 22. If they carried on at a point a game, they'd get 38 points. Not enough. So they need a couple of back-to-back wins to ease their discomfort.
Everton and Liverpool are 12th and 13th respectively, both with 26 points from 22 games. Another 14 each from 16 games looks within their compass (three wins, 2 draws), but a bad run oif a few games without a win would trouble them.
In 7th Bolton Wanderers should be secure, but even they won't rest easy until they bag another 10 points from their remaining 15 games. If they were to lose three or four in a row and slip into the bottom half the board and fans would soon get nervous.
In a season when the top teams are stumbling and not shining as brightly as in recent seasons, the battle to stay in the Premier League should keep our interest until the very last day.
Just TEN POINTS cover the teams from bottom (West Ham United with 20 points) all the way up to Bolton Wanderers in seventh place with 30 points.
Forty points is usually taken as the number you need to be safe after 38 games. Only once have more points been needed. That could happen again this seasonas points are being shared around liberally between all teams.
No team among the 14 in that ten-point zone will consider themselves safe until they are comfortably past the 40-mark point.
Let's look at a few examples:
At the bottom West Ham have 20 points from 23. They need at least another 20 from 15 games. That's seven wins from 15; they've only won four so far. Ouch.
In 17th place are Aston Villa with 22 points from 22. If they carried on at a point a game, they'd get 38 points. Not enough. So they need a couple of back-to-back wins to ease their discomfort.
Everton and Liverpool are 12th and 13th respectively, both with 26 points from 22 games. Another 14 each from 16 games looks within their compass (three wins, 2 draws), but a bad run oif a few games without a win would trouble them.
In 7th Bolton Wanderers should be secure, but even they won't rest easy until they bag another 10 points from their remaining 15 games. If they were to lose three or four in a row and slip into the bottom half the board and fans would soon get nervous.
In a season when the top teams are stumbling and not shining as brightly as in recent seasons, the battle to stay in the Premier League should keep our interest until the very last day.
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