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+----- Thread: Should the League Follow Non-League's Lead? (/showthread.php?tid=8167)
Should the League Follow Non-League's Lead? - Devongone - 20-02-2019
Non-League football continues to go through its re-structuring process. Occasionally its changes have been embarrassingly geographically-challenged and have sometimes overlooked the financial and player implications for small clubs required to travel distances they have never contemplated in their entire history, but in general the aim has been laudable. Unfortunately, however, the higher up the pyramid you cast your eye the more the changes below illustrate the sheer insanity learing down at them from above.
Getting the right result?
On Saturday Havant and Waterlooville, fighting to avoid relegation in the National League, played a tough home game against Wrexham and came out 2-3 losers, which put them in some trouble. Then on Tuesday night they were required to travel all the way up to Fylde, who on Saturday hadn’t even been able to score against Chesterfield, but in the night air suddenly became capable of banging in six to more than double Havant’s trouble. Would the score have been 6-2 on a Saturday? Take a look a little higher, our oldest club, Notts County, stretched themselves on Saturday to somehow beat local rivals Mansfield 1-0, but by Tuesday they were playing again in an all-important game and were hammered by Newport County and look like exiting the EFL. And it doesn’t only happen in the lower divisions, The Championship with its 24 teams is at best half-football half-slog. West Brom had to win at Villa on Saturday and were asked to do the same again at QPR on Tuesday. Does succeeding in that make them a potential Premier League team, or just the toughest Championship outfit, probably doomed to slogging their way towards being outclassed one year on? No wonder more and more top Premier sides loan out their youngsters to European leagues where football ability is a higher priority than elastic hamstrings and bulging calf muscles.
Marathon?
Non-League teams continue to cry out for more access to Football League status. Football League teams resist for fear of losing their own status, ignoring the fact that more access would also give them a better chance of returning to former habitual inglories. Meanwhile football hangs onto its antiquated marathon 46 game structure and cup games that present such a remote chance of success that many clubs tend to rely on their fringe players to guarantee an early exit.
A Fifth Division? Would protest strangle it a birth?
Is their something magical about the number 92? It’s the atomic number of uranium, which is worrying. Wouldn’t a more sensible and rounded answer to the number of member league clubs be 100? Reducing the number of teams in the top division by just two when the Premier League was created seemed to improve the standard of football. Reducing the number of teams in the Championship by four might even see promoted teams being ready for the exigencies of the higher division rather than being groomed as automatic relegation candidates. But, of course, if 20 teams in the Championship implies radical change for the few of its teams required to step down a level, the structure changes even more radically once the notion of 20 teams is followed through and necessitates a fifth division. By the time we reach the current Division One potential change means only about nine current teams would maintain their status so we could expect plenty of voices raised in protest once its reality, like Brexit, hoved into view, but wouldn’t the result be better? The fifth division would obviously be welcomed by the whole non-league, because eight of their teams would be involved. Though it might not be universally popular I’d suggest the top four National League teams should automatically join Division Five and I’d return to the old-fashioned system of a ballot of the current 92 to determine which four other non-leaguers irrespective of current form were currently best-suited and ready for league status, simply so that the change and Division Five would start off on the right foot.
Within this structure the National League could retain its current Northern and Southern Divisions so that developing, sometimes part-time, clubs would not face the possibility of regular 900-mile round trips come Saturday, or Tuesday night. Promotion to and relegation from the new five division structure could also be made attractive by the winner of each National League section automatically going up and a play-off system bringing through a third side. Though current League sides would fear the three relegation places, the potential of three promotion places and greatly-reduced travelling expenditure during any exile would soften the blow and open up the entire football structure.
Cup Opportunities
With five divisions it might also be possible to provide a proper, unique role for the secondary cup competition, now the Carabao Cup, which really only becomes popular with Premier League sides if they reach the semi-final stage. The Premier League sides with their major rewards elsewhere could be exempted from it entirely, thus enthusing current Championship sides about winning a Wembley final, and possibly taking advantage of the new thinner programme to structure the cup in a different way (and coincidentally euthanasing the current Checkatrade Distrophy).
Once we are down to a more sensible number of games per season and the League Cup, that everybody forgets about unless Man City and Chelsea turn out to be in the final, is reformed, maybe then we’ll be in a position to suggest something radical to revive that magical competition, the FA Cup. My current favourite solution would be to award a league bonus point for every FA Cup win from the first round onwards. Though a point seems a tiny reward it could decide a division, avoid relegation, qualify for Europe – vanishingly few managers would have the cojones to eschew that point in favour airing all the fringe players they wish they hadn’t signed. (AFC Wimbledon’s run for instance would have seen them pretty much level pegging with their rivals at the bottom of League One, instead of marooned in 24th place.) And wouldn't the crowds be back for cup games once a top club like Liverpool had put on a lame performance in the cup and cost themselves the league too.......?
Thoughts on a slow day in Devon.