Birtles: Premiership plan would kill football
WHAT is it that makes football special? Why is it the most popular sport in this country?
What is it about the game that has people screaming at the top of their lungs with joy one week and weeping with despair the next?
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Garry Birtles
It is the ability to dream; to dare to hold lofty expectations and then having those hopes crushed.
It is about pondering the possibilities and daring to believe that the impossible might just be possible after all.
It is about Notts County making it into the top flight of the game in the early 90s then facing the mighty Manchester United at Old Trafford in their first fixture.
It is about Hull City going from the basement division into the Premiership in just a few short, glorious years.
It is Wimbledon going from non-league obscurity to winning the FA Cup and fighting it out with the country's top sides.
It is seeing sides like Stoke, Wolves and Burnley defy the odds to take their place among the big guns.
It is looking on as teams like Leeds United, Newcastle, Manchester City, Leicester City and yes, unfortunately, Nottingham Forest, find themselves plunged into the lower divisions and, eventually, clawing their way out again.
Football is about the unexpected, it is about remarkable glories and painful, unforeseen failures.
The glory of the game is that it is just so beautifully unpredictable. Anything can and does happen.
It is why we still get excited about the FA Cup. It is David versus Goliath, it is about shocks, spills and thrills.
I just hope that I am not the only person who understands this.
Because, if Bolton chairman Phil Gartside gets his way, none of this will be possible any more.
Gartside has proposed a two-tier Premiership, made up of 18 teams in each, with no relegation into or promotion from the Football League.
In other words, an elite top two divisions of football, with everyone else shut out.
And there is only one reason for this to happen. Money.
Such plans are not about making football better or improving competition at the top level.
It might be dressed up as such, but it is nothing of the sort.
It is about protecting teams like Bolton who have managed to battle their way into the elite and want to ensure that they do not drop out of it again.
It is self preservation, nothing else.
Gartside was quoted this week as saying: "I'm not a visionary. I'm just interested in the game and how I can help to make it better."
Well, here's a tip Phil, one way to make the game better is to take your idea and file it where the sun does not shine.
Because I look at the list of pros and cons and, I'll be honest, I struggle to come up with a single viable reasonable reason to do it.
Yes, it will make those at the top level richer, it will make their futures more secure, it will ensure that they remain in the promised land forever and a day.
But it will also kill the rest of football.
Where would we be if Championship, League One and even League Two sides could not at least dream that, one day, they could fight their way to the very pinnacle of football?
At the minute, it is unlikely for some, but not impossible. It is not a closed shop.
Notts County and their new owners want to make the Magpies a top flight club again, they harbour lofty ambitions to make the world's oldest football league club a success again.
And, after years of misery, the black and white half of the city can dare to hope.
But not if Gartside gets his way, what would they have left to strive for?
To win what is now League One?
That would be great – but not if that is suddenly the highest point they can reach.
Do we want to become like American sport, where they have the major leagues and then the minors?
I suspect Gartside would be happy with that.
But I implore every other Premiership chairman to think logically about this.
At the minute – while some of the football might sometimes be better in La Liga – we have the best, most fiercely contested league in the world.
Why try to fix something that isn't broken?
Gartside's proposal to include Rangers and Celtic in the new set-up was swiftly, emphatically rejected.
I hope the rest of his ideas are given the same short shrift, for the sake of football.
Because everyone has to be able to have a dream.
9 Comments
by Svens Alter ego, ROT Nottm
Saturday, November 14 2009, 10:36PM
“Whoops, sorry about the font size change...just got a little over excited.”
by Svens Alter Ego, ROT Nottm
Saturday, November 14 2009, 10:30PM
“Well done Gary
A good point well made
We all know this idea/ vision is, in reality, just DREAM concocted by a man who¿s just running scared.
He knows that one day soon, that owd premiership grim reaper is going to come knocking on his clubs door and in his deluded little mind this is the only way he can stop the inevitable.
You can look at plenty of clubs outside the prem (Newcastle Leeds & Forest.....just to name a few), who have the right to say......Bolton who ?
The blokes a joker who cannot be taken seriously, after all, we can all see how S$%T his judgment is by the manager he¿s appointed !!
Enough said.”
by Phil, Hinckley
Saturday, November 14 2009, 4:32PM
“Good old Garry, spot on as ever, he's seen through the bull and found the common denominator - MONEY. I think the Championship is the most exciting league in Europe - maybe not the highest quality (and it's good to see really good football like Barcelona, AC Milan etc sometimes) but that Cardiff v Forest match was a good advert for this league. Look at Blackpool and Ipswich - that's what this league can do. We're not just Forest, we're Forest forever.”
by Mr. Sensible, The Real World
Saturday, November 14 2009, 4:06PM
“A, B I wish it was as simple as that.
The proposal for the 2-tier division was not completely killed off yesterday; they have earmarked it for consideration at a later date.”
by a, b
Saturday, November 14 2009, 1:41PM
“Two words.....never happen.
That about covers it. I cant believe people are even discussing this, whether they agree with it or not, it just lends credibility to a stupid idea. Just let the loony (Gartside) have his 2 minutes of fame voicing his stupid ideas, ignore them, and he'll soon shut up.”
by Mr. Sensible, The Real World
Saturday, November 14 2009, 10:51AM
“Here, here.
This idea is as nonsense as that one about the 39th game.
Top flight football has lost its sole; it is all about money.
Unfortunately, that's the way top flight sport in general seems to be going at the moment; Jiles Clark saying about how if the ashes were only available on terestrial TV then the ECB would lose a lot of money to put in to the grass routes. When everyone knows they would just lose money from the likes of Freddy Flintoff's sallary ETC. For, if you make it available to as many as possible, you actually increase participation.
What is sport coming to these days?”
by Gary, Hougham
Saturday, November 14 2009, 10:07AM
“I couldn't agree more with Garry Birtles.
Football is brilliant (not awesome) as it is and doesn't need sanitising into some kind of Americanised brand managers franchise hell.
The only other thing in my life that can bring me such mixed emotions, make me ecstatic one minute & puzzled the next, make me want to laugh, cry & shout all at the same time is my wife. (I love her & I love Forest; but I loved Forest first.)
The wonderful thing about our beautiful game is that Phil Gartside's Bolton in all certainty will be back in the Championship or League 1 in the next 5 to 10 years. If Mr Gartside were being honest he knows that, hence his half-baked re-hashed plan.
While we're on the subject of half-baked plans & ludicrously silly people in football; when will we ever get rid of that prime idiot of world football, Sepp Blatter?
How does such a silly man from a footballing back water like Switzerland end up running world football with such a rod of iron? He is in my mind the prime example of a lunatic in charge of the asylum!
When will this absurd man ever go away?”
by Gary, Hougham
Saturday, November 14 2009, 10:06AM
“I couldn't agree more with Garry Birtles.
Football is brilliant (not awesome) as it is and doesn't need sanitising into some kind of Americanised brand managers franchise hell.
The only other thing in my life that can bring me such mixed emotions, make me ecstatic one minute & puzzled the next, make me want to laugh, cry & shout all at the same time is my wife. (I love her & I love Forest; but I loved Forest first.)
The wonderful thing about our beautiful game is that Phil Gartside's Bolton in all certainty will be back in the Championship or League 1 in the next 5 to 10 years. If Mr Gartside were being honest he knows that, hence his half-baked re-hashed plan.
While we're on the subject of half-baked plans & ludicrously silly people in football; when will we ever get rid of that prime idiot of world football, Sepp Blatter?
How does such a silly man from a footballing back water like Switzerland end up running world football with such a rod of iron? He is in my mind the prime example of a lunatic in charge of the asylum!
When will this absurd man ever go away?”
by Ali, London
Saturday, November 14 2009, 9:11AM
“Great article Garry (who inidently is fast becoming the top pundit on Sky), and I hope the plastic clubs in the Premier League take heed.
But sadly, I fear the Champions League and it's self perpetuating nature has already broken football irrevocably.
As you say though, a two-tier closed shop top flight would be the final nail in the coffin.”