EFL Proposed Promotion / Relegation Changes

Feels like when a third of the league can have a chance of promotion, it does taint the sporting merit side of the game for me? Feels like they want TV drama and moments over the season slog and they want to add two more (will be 6 more when L1 and L2 follow) one off nail-bitters in May.

 

Exactly. Why stop there. They might as well merge the 3 EFL divisions into two leagues of 36 and have a Champions league format where you only play a randomly drawn set of regular fixtures during the season and the top 16 do a knockout to see who goes up.

or even have 2 leagues of 36 where you play each team once, 17 home 17 away randomly drawn pre season. Season ends for everyone below 18th. Bottom 3 are relegated.
Top 2 go up automatically and the next 16 go into 4 groups of 4 where they play each other once. Highest placed teams in the league play all their games at home or play each other home and away.
Top 2 go into seeded QF where highest placed teams kept apart and the highest placed in the league is at home.
Into Semis for 2 legs (highest league place away in 1st leg) and final at Wembley.
This way at the start of each season 50% of teams have a chance of promotion.

 

Mental to me personally that an 8th place team could make it to the premier league.

We’ve already seen that the gap between the top end of championship and the premier league is massive, so I can’t imagine any team who goes up in 8th place, would actually stand any chance of staying up.

As others have said, I’d much prefer 3 up 3 down in the national league.

 

Then it will become a Franchise and a closed shop?

 

Super League idea went down well didn't it!

 

Just go 4 up and 4 down in every division. Stop the silliness with 6 teams in the play offs.

 

That’s never going to happen. Playoffs keep the season alive for so many more teams. There are very few ‘dead rubber’ end of season games now because of the playoffs.

 

I meant the suggestion of 6 teams in the play offs...like the NL

Im all for......

1-2-3 - promoted
4-5-6-7 - play offs
Bottom 4 - relegated

I think L2 and NL should be 3 teams a season.

 

The PL aren't voting for that. It would be like turkeys voting for Xmas!

 

I know....be nice if the PL just said thats how it is but yeh, will remain 3 up and 3 down

 

The play off change from 4 to 6 clubs has been approved and will come in from next season, L1&2 will have it in the coming years it seems too.

 

Tranmere were the only team to vote against the play off proposals, 67 voted for it, 4 clubs decided note to vote.

 

What is interesting in this article is that it mentions that the 3rd placed side will face the lowest ranked side so looks like the path won't be pre-determined at the start like the National League which is the only downside for me in the National League version. Last season York finished 2nd and ended up playing 5th placed Oldham whereas Forest Green finished 3rd and played 7th placed Southend. The same happened the year Wrexham lost in the play offs, they lost to Grimsby who finished 6th and Solihull Moors got to play Chesterfield who finished 7th.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/efl-championship-play-off-changes-36829357

 

Yeah it's not an exact copy. Sounds like it will be in L1&L2 the year after. Odd that it's just one game for 5th vs 8th and 6th vs 7th, and then the winners go into a traditional two legged play off?

So these games will have to be quick, but then it means 3rd and 4th probably have a two week gap until their play offs start, so they won't have much rhythm or momentum to feed from.

 

If they had the time in the schedule I think they might have gone for both being 2 legged matches. With 2 legs in the semi final it should probably give the 3rd and 4th placed side a bit more of an advantage, it will be much harder for lower placed sides to win over 2 legs than a 1 off match.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Championship final now becomes the Bank Holiday Monday game rather than the Saturday to give them a couple of extra days to play with in the schedule but even still to fit it in it will be tight.