16 teams in Premiership?

Duras

Sepp Blatter proposes all the top national leagues to have 16 teams.

What do you think, is it a good idea? Is it really necessary? Wouldn't Premier League be sort of empty after dropping from 22 to 16?

el rabitos

theres only 20 teams in the premiership

16 teams would definitely eliminate the weak and would probably make the champions league more competative.

MrJoeSoap

Eliminate the weak? Why should they?

20 teams is fine by me.

Jivin Turkey

It would initially eliminate the weak but then new "weak" teams would be born. It would be the same if there was a European Super League. Great idea in theory, but the exitement of watching matches of the calibre of AC Milan against say PSV every week when the likes of PSV are losing all the time, their fans lose interest, and before you know it they are akin to a Sunderland. A yoyo team.

el rabitos

Eliminate the weak? Why should they?

well if u ask sepp blatter he might tell u because they get in the way?

chelsea travelling to sunderland 4 days before a champions league match would seem like a waste of time to some people.

It would initially eliminate the weak but then new "weak" teams would be born. It would be the same if there was a European Super League. Great idea in theory, but the exitement of watching matches of the calibre of AC Milan against say PSV every week when the likes of PSV are losing all the time, their fans lose interest, and before you know it they are akin to a Sunderland. A yoyo team.

thats 1 way of thinking about it.

i'd suggest teams would have to be more carefull about how they spend they're money, what managers they hire and what players they take risks on.

the structure of how money is distributed throughout the divisions would have to be organised in a manner that would allow the team being promoted to have the finances to be able to compete for survival and to then go on to move up the table

i like the idea though. the execution of it is another thing

Lemlin

I'd prefer to see it cut to 18, not 16. Any change would really suit the bigger teams more than anyone else, those who are in the CL.

MrJoeSoap

The way I see it, the Premier League is a big market. Cutting it to 16 teams means making the massive amounts of money available to a smaller number of clubs. Hence, a smaller number of teams get richer and the rest are left to feed on the scraps. It would become increasingly difficult for promoted teams to compete, as they would have nowhere near as much in terms of resources to match the "bigger clubs". The flip-side of the coin is that relegated clubs will no doubt experience massive financial difficulties.

On a practical level, where would the four teams "removed" from the Premiership go? The Championship is already packed with 24 teams, as are Leagues One and Two. Any more than that is completely ludicrous.

People will (and have...) made the argument that Chelsea having to play smaller teams just days before a CL match is ridiculous. Thats down to poor management from the FA. Chelsea (etc...) should only play on Sundays after midweek CL games and on Saturdays before CL games; in other words there should not be CL games two weeks in succession (or they should at least be kept to a minimum). The number of games being played in Europe is quite high already, but because it is where the money lies the domestic leagues are being neglected.

The smaller the league gets, the more elitist it becomes, the more things get geared towards Europe, and the more football starts drifting towards having a priority on European games rather than domestic football.

Maybe its because I support a team who would be outside that "Top 16" that I feel like this though, it can only be good for those clubs comfortably within it I would imagine.

mike65

It won't happen. Just won't. Far to many people with too much to loose.

Mike.

Zaph

If they cut it to 16 teams Leeds will never get back up. Expand it to 24 teams, I say

Necronomicon

el rabitos wrote:

i'd suggest teams would have to be more carefull about how they spend they're money, what managers they hire and what players they take risks on.

That would be enormously hard to execute because there's so many grey areas. Like how would would they define 'careful'?
As for the 16 teams, I agree with JoeSoap; the less teams, the more elitist it would become and promoted sides would have difficulty competing.

blu_sonic

does that mean that other leagues with less than 16 teams in it would be expanded?

Rikand

blu_sonic wrote:

does that mean that other leagues with less than 16 teams in it would be expanded?

well that is something they are planning for the irish league isnt it ? have a season where no promotion/relegation takes place and just pick the best 16 teams to make up a new premier division ?

blu_sonic

wellits not been confirmed, thats an FAI sudjestion, silly IMO

Zebra3

Any changes to the English Premier League need to be ratified by two-thirds of its membership.

Most would be too afraid that they'd lose out.

"Do turkeys vote for Chrimbo?" scenario. It won't happen.

redspider

The top-flight went from 22 to 20, and I didnt notice any appreciable change. A reduction obviously does concentrate the money unless steps are taken to counteract that. There will always be weaker teams, that is the nature of the sport, and most of you will have heard my mantra by now - success on the pitch begats financial success (well, income anyway), which begats success on the pich, etc, etc.

But if 20 is better than 22, then 18 is likely to be better than 20. Of course, all top leagues could take a leaf out of what the SFA did in the 1970's or was it early 80's where they adopted a 10-club league in Scotland. That meant 36 games, playing each club 4 times. This was a good idea at the start, but over the years teams got tired of playing each other so many times as did the fans probably. There is a balance and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with 16, or 18. UEFA should standardise it for Europe, but it would be hard to do it for the world under FIFA I would imagine as each country will have different levels. In principle, I have no problem with 18 or 16.

Also, remember that in England there is a particular case of having two organisations, the FA and the Football League. There is a power struggle of sorts going on there ever since the split in the 1990's or was it late 80's.

There's a lot of power struggling going on in football at the moment, and it will continue as there is so much money in the sport. We see this with the G14(18) and the Charleroi case with Uefa/Fifa and internationals. This topic probably deserves a thread on its own as it is a major discussion point at the moment.

In football, there are struggles going on between players and clubs, between clubs and national associations, between national associations and regional associations such as Uefa, and between Uefa and the governing body, Fifa. They are all fighting over the amount of money they can garner from us fans and consumers, ie: the filty lucre, who at the end of the day are paying for all of this.

redspider

blu_sonic

didn't they go to 20 from the "new look league" which was the premiership.
the idea was to condense it and of course generate the revenue. i think 20 teams is a good amount to have

Kingp35

I agree with JoeSoap. Cutting the league to 16 will only make it even harder on the smaller club to do well as they will suffer financially. I think this idea was said purely because it means less matches but for me the idea wasnt thought through and it would most certainly be to the disadvantage of anyone outside the top 16 clubs.

Bad idea IMO and I cant see it ever happening

blu_sonic

well not just outsde the top 16 but teams from 10-16 are going to struggle fighting off relegation,the prem as it stands would read

P W D L F A Pts
Chelsea 30 24 3 3 58 19 75
Man United 29 19 6 4 58 29 63
Liverpool 31 18 7 6 42 21 61
Tottenham H 30 14 10 6 43 28 52
Arsenal 30 15 5 10 48 23 50
Blackburn R 30 15 4 11 41 36 49
Bolton Wndrs 28 13 9 6 39 28 48
Wigan Ath 30 14 4 12 35 36 46
Everton 30 13 4 13 28 38 43
West Ham Utd 29 12 6 11 44 44 42
Man City 30 12 4 14 39 35 40
Newcastle U 30 11 6 13 30 35 39
Charlton Ath 30 11 6 13 34 41 39
Fulham 31 10 5 16 40 51 35
Aston Villa 30 8 10 12 34 41 34
M'brough 29 9 7 13 39 49 34

thats tough on newcastle to boro

dr zoidberg

blu_sonic wrote:

didn't they go to 20 from the "new look league" which was the premiership.
the idea was to condense it and of course generate the revenue. i think 20 teams is a good amount to have

It was 22 for the first two or three seasons of the Premiership.

I think it's fine as it is now with 20, if it were to be reduced it should be reduced to 18 as 16 is too few for a top league in my opinion. It won't happen though the clubs would be worried about a drop in TV revenue from less matches being shown, although conversely if it caused an improvement in the quality of the league, with players being rested less often, then TV money could increase.

Duras

I also think that 20 is ok for Premier League and it shouldn't be changed.

16 (or less) teams in first division are to be in championships where the season break is too long due to weather conditions (like Russia or Sweden for example) or in smaller countries where there are not too many powerfull teams (like Switzerland, Ireland).
I think 18+ is just fine for strongest of Europe (England, Spain, Italy).
Chelsea playing too many games? Chelsea can afford "22 first team players". They can use 11 with Sunderland and other 11 in CL.