Most liked posts in thread: European Super league

What else were they meant to do. The FA's and the League's are basically in UEFA's pocket and won't stand against them. They all tried as part of the ECA to get CL reforms that produced a better product rather than just adding more matches that people don't care about and basically the only people who benefit from making the value of the competition worse is UEFA because even if the price per match goes down more matches mean more in UEFA's pocket, But UEFA ignored almost everything

And if the ESL idea hadn't been leaked last year as a possibility they would have passed the reform changes which basically created the UEFA sanctioned Super League which as I've detailed before was worse. And UEFA while they adjusted it a bit didn't fix most of the issues if anything they came up with an even worse system thats confusing and its just going to soften fans up to accept a change thats easier to understand and is closer to what the initially wanted.

Again there is a reason the clubs rushed the announcement and thats because everything else had failed and despite UEFA being told to delay the reform announcement so more discussions could be had they announced they were going to ratify it on Monday which is why the clubs announced this on Sunday to try and force UEFA not to ratify the changes

The only card those twelve had to play was pulling a power play like this because most of the TV money is tied on having those teams as part of it. Tv companies aren't paying that much for games like Zenit vs Olympiacos

 

Why was no-one kicking up a fuss about it when it was revealed last year? We had pretty good details of it in the press and no-one batted an eyelid but when it was these 12 clubs and it wasn’t even officially announced everyone lost the plot.

And with UEFA I’m just not sure they will really care what the fans say tbh. There is a lack of accountability across the board with them despite the fact they are basically the self appointed governing body in Europe, there is nothing that says football has to be run through them after all. They especially lack accountability to the fans. It would need a bigger movement than just the fans but the biggest thing and that’s clubs leaving and doing something outside of UEFA is now off the table.

It's why I wish people hadn’t lost their minds as much, it needed a responce of 'we get why you are doing it and support that but not how you are doing it’ because that nuclear option needed protected. They will make ten changes, perhaps one towards it in a step by step basis so people don’t really realise, have the first year decide by league finishes but by that point everything will be too late to stop

 

The voting structure was to be changed to stop the yo-yo clubs sabotaging every attempt to make changes for the better of the game. As I’ve mentioned before there have been multiple proposals made by the top clubs to INCREASE solidarity payments to the EFL and they have either been voted down or have been scaled back with parachute payments being increase by more.

Right now you could put a vote to triple solidarity payments and I can guarantee you Sheffield United, Fulham, West Brom, Brighton and Newcastle would vote it down. Plus atleast 2 of Burnley, Palace, Southampton, Leeds or Villa would join in and kill it. If you reduce it to double and give most of the rest in parachute payments they would agree.

It's just like the plan for the PL was always to reduce to 18. At this point that will never happen as it’s not worth putting it to a vote. And then you have the the 5 sub rule, in Europe United have generally brought on atleast 1, often 2 youngsters who wouldn’t have got on otherwise and that’s good or everyone because the u23 is so pointless getting them some experience helps them develop even if they don’t make it at United but that doesn’t happen in the PL because we have senior players who need some minutes if we are going to make subs. Yes with 5 subs the sub options a top team has will often be better but that’s the same anyway. And even for smaller clubs it gives you more tactical options to make, your CB is looking tired even if it’s a young player maybe you can add some fresh legs to help him out, or put a quick young player up top who can run allowing for the rest of the team to stay more solid. Etc

And sure it wasn’t done overnight but I imagine there are rough plans for a number of things even if they don’t expect to have to call on them. There was clearly a rush here to get it out before UEFA announced the cl changes so they could try and send them back to drawing board and send a clear signal to everyone they don’t support the changes.

And I'm certainly not saying we should remove the chance of a Leicester situation but let’s be honest the CL is already stuffed with too many low appeal games. Russia gets 3 entrants into the CL but in over 20 years they have got out the group stage FOUR times. Ajax who don’t even get automatic entry have done it more than that on their own.

It would be like stacking the FA cup to ensure a quarter of the names being non-league. Right now a non-league team playing in r3 is something people like to watch especially against a prem team it if it happens too often especially in the same season it just lack the appeal. Again using Man Utd I bet the Europa League match against AC Milan had more viewers than all the games in United CL group apart from United vs PSG

 

I'm not convinced that the PL has any way currently to legally enforce a points deduction or any other sanction on the Big 6 for doing what they did.

The irony of this is that if any of the owners or directors of the Big 6 were to get involved in buying another PL or EFL club, those people would still pass the Owners & Directors test and wouldn't be barred from buying another club. This fiasco should be a wakeup call to the PL, the EFL and probably the FA as well that the governance of such an important sport is pitiful. The regulations of who can buy and more importantly control what clubs can do needs a serious overhaul. And I wouldn't exclude the lower league clubs, including our own from this.