I don't think a winter break is a good idea for England. For starters it's not really necessary, is it? Sure sometimes it snows in England but it never really gets that cold. And it would compress the schedule so that the clubs have to play even more games in a short time than they do now (although some of your other points deal with that too).
No. 20 is fine. Lowering the number in it will just decrease the likelihood of new teams getting there and making a real fist of establishing themselves in it. Yes. Sure, it doesn't get particularly cold too often, but the break itself is what's needed. No. It's monopolised enough as it is, and the romance of the 3rd round draw is one of the vital parts of the competition. Scrap them full-stop. That'll never happen. No one likes Golden Goal. What, and have nothing more than a second Johnson's Paint Trophy with Champo teams in it? Last year proved the CC is the one thing that actually works and is growing in popularity. Leave it is as it is. I'll leave that to people who care about the England national team Yes. Wage cap. Now. I want full video-replays for all incidents. Have an extra official to monitor the same feed as Sky/BBC if needs be. Christ, let the 4th official do it, they don't do very much else do they? The sooner it comes in and everyone sees how good it is for the game the better. I also want full implementation of rules ensuring only captains can talk to the referee. Book anyone who transgresses, send out anyone who comes barrelling shouting and screaming. Or waving imaginary cards. A few instances of that and show the players who's in charge. I'm loath to take much from rugby, but respect for the referee is one thing I would have, gladly. Also stamp out diving. Difficult, yes. Video will help. Just for god's sake bring some modicum of discipline and sportsmanship back to the game. Oh, and rescind the rule that says it's a yellow for taking your top off when celebrating. All of these things would be great. No doubt TPTB will instead ban goal celebrations in their entirety or something equally asinine.
I agree, but I would still let the head referee make the final decision and it has to happen as close to real-time as possible. Like, have the 4th (or a 5th) referee watch the game on a monitor, give him radio contact with the head referee to tell him how he sees the situation in the replay. Sometimes a situation still isn't clear even with a hundred tv cameras in the stadium, so the head referee needs the authority to make the call in the end.
The problem with a winter break is how long it lasts for and when it is? There was an awful lot of snow last winter and it did mainly fall in December/early Jan, so a winter break would have been good. Contrast that with the year before and much of the snow came later on in February so you might end up with a situation whereby you have a winter break, then have fixture disruption anyway, still leading to too many games in the second half of the season. And to be hones the too many fixtures thing is nonsense. The big clubs whine about it then take the first opportunity to fly off to fucking Thailand or China or wherever for friendlies to make ££££. And lets not forget, if you want to reduce the number of games teams are playing the best way isn't to amend the British leagues, it's to reduce the number of European games. Seriously it's ridiculous to have a team who finished 16 points behind the champions in the Champions' league. I think reducing the Prem to 18 teams wouldn't be a bad idea, but I'd add the rejoiner that if they did so it should be 4 up/4 down! This would mitigate for HappyDayRiot's fair point about less opportunities for teams to go up. Never happen but it'd be fun!
Personally I'd scrap the Mickey Mouse/League Cup. We don't need that AND the FA Cup. Either that, or have it so that the Premier League teams have to field x number of players under the age of 21.
I feel with a league of 18 that 4 relegation places would be too much and theres nothing wrong with 3. However I would say expand the 4 up and down to all the football league instead of the current League 2 promotion and League 1 relegation. However I probably would only do 3 to be relegated out of the football league in League 2.
Don't they do that anyway? ;-) I like the League Cup, and I think it's got less Mickey Mouse in the last few years and I like that there are two competitions the majority of teams have at least a chance of, plus a money stream for smaller clubs tied with Prem sides.
Don't worry - with the likes of Spurs and Citeh in Europe, England's co-efficient will soon drop like a stone and they'll lose a CL place This would be fine if applied across the board actually - think of the increased competition if you got nothing for finishing between, say, 5th and 7th. And I mean in any European league. Problem there though is that in England there are between 4 and 6 clubs who could easily monopolise those places for years, unlike in Italy or Spain where beneath the top two sides it's a lot more even, or Germany/Netherlands where it's a free-for-all. I would quite happily see the CL go back to pure knockout as well. The groups, last season aside, are usually garbage. Same for the Europa. And please god get rid of those useless dancing idiot 5th and 6 officials. That failed on a pathetic scale. As for the winter break, for me it's not the winter part that's vital. It's the break. Starkers is right about the weather, but it's rarely so bad it culls the fixture list south of Carlise, is it? Hell, how often does it affect the PL - the league you want it to protect - anyway? Two weeks will be sufficient, relaunch in the first weekend of January with the FA Cup 3rd round. Also, and enough time has passed for me to said this lucidly and free of bitterness, scrap the play-offs. Blackpool are about to everyone why that's a good idea.
^ The football league would struggle to get a winter break in due to 46 games plus FA cup, League Cup and the League 1/2 Cup but then again I only care about the PL getting one to potentially help England out.
Yeah, the bigger teams in particularly do that already, but let's formalise it. Most teams tend to have more young English players in their youth teams than they do in their first team, so a good chance to blood and experience the younger English talent. I'd put the rule in for all Premier League teams. Given that the Championship and below are predominantly still English or home-based squads it's not such a problem for them, so just keep the rule for Premier League sides.
I was about to say that I thought we'd shown everyone that a few years ago, however, we finished third that season so would have gone up and embarassed ourselves either way!
^ At least you were embarrassed in a memorable and long-lasting fashion. And Derby's season that year did wonders for my Fantasy league team. I think by picking two opposition players for every Derby game, I won it by about 300 points
Never going to happen. It doesn't matter so much for the English clubs, but many clubs from other countries literally depend on the money generated by the Champions League. I don't like the group stages very much either but the money is crucial for many clubs.
What we should do is have only the first 8 seeded and then the rest not. It would be great to see groups like we used to see in the 90's. The best group I ever saw was in 1998 with Man Utd, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Brondby... some excellent games there.
No no, don't you remember what genius Billy D said, if only he'd had those extra few weeks well we'd have been brilliant wouldn't we! Somehow I don't think Blakpool will do as badly as us, face it even self destructing points deducting Pompy finished with more points than us...
Well in fairness a succesion of people had already begun the dismantling of Burley's team (I'm still amazed they reached the playoffs, you could just tell they were knackered by the end of the season because the squad was so thin, we were v lucky with injuries) I think Davies was very lucky with injuries that season too, if Steve Howard had ever gotten injured we'd have been screwed. It wasn't great football though, effective but not pretty. I'd rather we'd have gone up with George B though, I think we'd have stayed up, or at least had a better stab at it.
Oh I don't know. I think we'd have possibly fared better than most would have thought we would have Howard got injured. We did, afterall, have the little terrier on the bench, Pesch. Great little striker who always seemed to defy the odds to get in for a goal. I remember the game at Hillsboro' that season when we won 2-1 with Howard getting the winner in injury time. We went down to 10 men, and then 0-1 down. Only turned things around when Pesch came on and got the equaliser. Crowded penalty area, little nudge in the defenders back, goal. Nice! Burley's team was so great to watch, but thinking about it, had they gone up, then that would have brought in the funds necessary to keep the three amigos in control for many years to come. Urgh, what a terrible notion!