My summarised take on Franchise Football

[leeslover]

i cant say i share your view of it never happening...it already is to a certain extent with champions league football,all be it on a smaller scale.

 

i can see a league being made of the top 4 teams in england,france,spain,italy and germany.and i sincerely hope that if this does happen that the fa and fl get together to restructure what is left,you can still have 4 diviosions but incorporate the top conference league into it,and take a vote on whether or not to include scotland,but they cant go straight to the top of the tree,they have to earn there stripes so to speak.....what they then need to do is say to the breakawy leage that if you set this up and leave,you cant or wont be allowed back into the domestic set up for a minimum of 10 years.

 

they should then set a precedent that no club is allowed to field more than 4 foreign players in a game,after all its these foreign players that are forcing our own kids out of the game and youth acadamys to decline,and also the state of the current national team.

Would you really expect Celtic and the Hun Glasgow Rangers Football Club to work their way through the divisions? It would guarantee a sell out at a few 4th division grounds, that's for sure.

 

I'm not convinced there is much room to grow the European format much further - in fact it has been reduced in scale already in recent years hasn't it? The way things are going it would be simpler to just allow a few top European teams in to the Premiership, that's where all the money is headed.

[edhunteruk]

Would you really expect Celtic and the Hun Glasgow Rangers Football Club to work their way through the divisions? It would guarantee a sell out at a few 4th division grounds, that's for sure.

 

I'm not convinced there is much room to grow the European format much further - in fact it has been reduced in scale already in recent years hasn't it? The way things are going it would be simpler to just allow a few top European teams in to the Premiership, that's where all the money is headed.

i dont see why they cant work there way through...just because there top of there tin pot league where ya play each other 4 times a season.

 

they shouldnt just be given automatic right of entry to a higher division.

[rudemedic]

Letting Wimbledon move to Milton Keynes set a dangerous 'precedent'. But it was essentially the same club with the same players and only the gorund changed (admittedly it was moved to a town 70 miles away). 'Wimbledon' hadn't played in Wimbledon for ages in fact I'm not sure even Plough Lane was in Wimbledon I think it is in Tooting. They had been nomads moving from professional ground to professional ground across South London for ages and their attendance suffered. If you take out the games against Man U and other teams who had more fans than Wimbledon in the Prem then I'm not sure the average gate has changed too much (it maybe have even gone up) and considering they have dropped 2 levels since then it is surprising. If you won't allow Wimbledon to move to Milton Keynes then why should Everton be allowed to move to Kirby, Bolton be allowed to move to Horwich etc. Going back a few years Arsenal in the 20s or 30s were based in Woolwich (at the Woolwich Arsenal) which is South of the river. In the days when only the uber-rich had cars that was a move which made the journey for the locals probably as problematic as moving Wimbledon to Milton Keynes. If that move was allowed by the FA why should the rules be any different just because the distances has got bigger.

 

In an ideal world football would go back to its tribal roots and you would support the local team- or the team where you grew up- not a team just because they were in the Premiership (and even then that isn't good enough for some it has to be a top 4) but this is not an ideal world and football is a business. Whoever it was that saw the idea of moving a team to Milton Keynes spotted a gap in the market and the FA let it happen. Who is to say that if the team had remained in Wimbledon (or South London at any rate) that they would have remained where they were (after all the players didn't change a lot when the club moved) and it obviously wasn't sustainible otherwise the move would never have happened- they might have gone bust which would have left whatever team that formed out of the ashes without a history too. If all those AFC Wimbledon fans or anyone who hates MK Dons in that part of the world had actually gone to watch Wimbledon week in week out then maybe this wouldn't have happened.

 

If someone who owns Oldham wants to move it because they feel the club is no longer viable then a large amount of blame will have to lie at the feet of the people of Oldham. You do NOT move a business (after all that what all football clubs are) if it is successful (or as successful as its going to get). Its quite simple if you want football to not allow such moves ever again then Sky has got to pull all their money out of football. The greedy League has got to cease to be- (or go back to being just the top flight). This would mean wages in football would plummet (clubs with bigger historys than Wimbledon would go out of business) and our best players would soon go abroad/retire. It would probably be detrimental to the national teams as well (would you play football for a living if you could earn more money doing something else). However in all honesty the list of places in this country that could support a professional football team (that doesn't already have one) especially one outside the prem and upper echelons of the championship (who I would argue its pointless moving to somewhere else in Engalnd) is not a long list.

 

Don't get me wrong I'm not a big fan of MK, but I don't hate them either. I can see the point made by those that hate them but I can see the otherside too. Plus its a lot easier to get too than wherever it would be in South London that wimbledon would be playing

[singe]

I'm an Exile, like many MK fans and their kids. Now, I've posted in the past to the effect that if I were able to find a young lady down here persistently drunk enough or with a sufficient lack of taste to breed with me, I would obviously try all the bribes/lies/Chaddy the Owl/detention in hot airless cupboards treatment to make them support Latics. If, however, they wanted to support a local team (shudder, Palace, maybe Fulham or Chelsea from here) I would be gutted but would understand. But if it were Milton Keynes, I would be horrified and I would not take them, any more than I would if Little Johnny decided that bear-baiting was his favourite sport. Little Johnny would have to learn that it was wrong and that he wasn't allowed, even if he cried and cried and cried all night long, and his friends were allowed to go because nice Mr Winkleman gave them tickets. Little Johnny would, I hope, grow up a better person for being denied something on a moral basis.

 

What I would never be able to take would be explaining to a Wimbledon fan why I was letting LJ go to watch a side, letting him think that they were a real football team. The challenge is, after Oldham Athletic have been transformed into the Workington Red Devils, for you to imagine meeting some of their fans on the way to the game whilst you happened to be going that way. They would have the shifty, "looking at toes," air about them that those of us who went to the Hockey Stadium will recall of their "home," fans.

 

What do you say? "It's all worked out for the best, your town deserves a club and I wish you all the best. Just a shame how things worked out."

 

Nope. It's wrong.

I agree with all of what you wrote Andy, and I am in that exact position of a son who is born 260 miles from my team. Rummy's phrase is right, I am sure Daniel will feel some disconnect from my team. I will use every trick in the book, and he may already be showing my signes of stubborness. So I live in hope. He is just over one and a half.

BUT, if he gets grief, ostracised or worse, then I won't be able to insist he supports Oldham. That is the line. IT is Oldham after all, and something of an easy shot.

 

However, we are lucky, Gillingham is too far away to have anyone with any realistic affinity, so I will try and get him to support my local no league team if it's not to be Latics, which in fortauntely in the Ryman PRem with aspirations of Conf South. Real football all the way.

One Uncle has been a Man U fan for 40 years, one of his nephews thereofre supports them, but the other being a bit of a rebel supports Chelsea.

OTher than that, I'd be tempted to push for Charlton if it was a higher league club.

WHat would you do?

Edited September 11, 2008 by singe