argh1 Posted January 15, 2005 Share Posted January 15, 2005 I was for no reason thinking about this....so I'll play Mr. Blatter. Instead of calling for season end dates and winter breaks etc. Why doesn't the EPL take a page from the much lower Irish Premier League. In the IPL League play started Sept. 25th '04 and ends April 30th '05 except for the odd make-up game. But League (CIS) Cup started Aug 13th and group section (four groups of 4 aka CL group stage) play ended Sept 21st with Quarters,semi's and finals all done by Nov 9th so most clubs played a minimum of 6 games to a maximum of 9 games. IPL teams also enter the IFA Cup in the round of 32 so a maximum of 5 games to the two finalists ( I'm not even gonna try to figure out various County Shields ) So even though this would mean limiting the EPL to 16 teams from the current 20 (only hurting the bottom four who usually struggle to stay up but cost alot in trying to compete) A 30 game league schedule could be maintained (down from 38) plus at most an extra 9 games for League Cup as only EPL teams would compete for this. (leaving the Coca-Cola Football League to expand the Associate Members [LDV VANS] Trophy to include Championship League sides) So with this format the top EPL clubs could only possibly play: 30 league games , 9 League Cup games and 5 FA Cup games for a total of 44 games in domestic play. The English could keep their Cups , the stadium filling Christmas season games and maybe even start a new tradition with the League Cup and the LDV Vans Trophy for all of the Coca-Cola Football League. Unfortunatly the boomerang promotion/ relagation clubs that fill positions 17,18,19,& 20 now will initially lose that big EPL $$ but maybe offset a bit as they can keep the payroll down since they won't be having to pay EPL salaries. Also giving the Coca-Cola Football League better marketing opportunities as larger clubs would stay in Championship League with a ripple affect through out the system. Ahhhhhhh playing Mr. Blatter was fun for a moment....now back to being a fan. QPR won for the 1st time in nine games and moved back to within 5 points of a play-off place.....yippeeeeeee go SUPERHOOPS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.