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The Importance of Sport (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Mick Harper
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But I'm beginning to change my mind. The government have denounced the scheme. WTF is it to do with them? Does Marcus Rashford lecture them on the provision of school meals? As soon as Fat Boris wobbled across the screen in day-glo saying, "We are going to do anything we can to protect football in this country..." I knew whose side I was on. You've never been to a bleedin' football match in your life. Go and save the Eton Wall Game if you want to make yourself useful. They can form a league with Geelong Grammar and Vassar School for Girls.

The weird thing though was, just as Channel 4 News had wheeled out their sport bloke from wherever he lives on the other 364 days, he added sotte voce that Mourinho had been sacked. Normally that would have been the one day of the year. A bit previous, if you want my opinion, Spurs.
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Grant



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It was funny to hear the representatives of the Premier League squeal about the unfairness of it all. But perhaps they have a point: at least the Premier League never dared to suggest that the biggest clubs should be free from the risk of relegation
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Mick Harper
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I cannot help remembering going through all this when the Premier League was being formed. Oh what a disaster that was. Oh how we all pine for the days when football was awful. Though they didn't actually have jumpers for goalposts, that's a bit of a myth.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Let them go. The premiership will be more exciting without them. The only real problem is that it leaves the city of Manchester without a premiership team. We might have to exceptionally promote West Didsbury and Chorlton AFC.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Wiley is against the idea of relegation from the super league. It's going to be so much fun to see Arsenal finish bottom, every year for the next decade. No, this is the best ESL selling point.
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Mick Harper
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Speaking of Arsenal and Jose Mourinho, we turn to our own managerial stakes. What should we wish for? If we win the Europa and qualify for the Champions League, Arteta (and the current hierarchy) will get a stay of execution. The current bunch of players will get us through to the knock-out stages which will count as a success and will mean another stay of execution. On the other hand failure in the Europa means exclusion from Europe completely and we won't be able to recruit anybody better than the current bunch of players. It's a tickler.

Spurs' fans have had their dilemma solved for them. Most of them couldn't abide Mourinho even if he had been successful. It's what we call "the liberal German's dilemma of late 1940". Man U's fans are in an even a bigger swamp because the Boy Wonder is proving unexpectedly successful, though not because he's a wonderful manager. As far as I can tell, but can I tell? I'm beginning to wonder at my own wonderfulness in these things. But not more generally, thank God. Reality checks are for wimps.
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Mick Harper
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I just realised. If the breakaway happens the Champion's League final will be between Paris Saint-German and Bayern Munich forever. Unless we can persuade them to breakaway separately. Er... together, if you see what I mean.
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Mick Harper
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I'm racking my brain trying to think who it was that invented the model for professional sport that consisted of disgusting money-obsessed owners operating a permanent oligarchy of top clubs with no promotion or relegation. It's come back to me! It was those English schweinhunds of ze eighteen-nineties and their revolting county cricket championship. I tell a lie, they once let Durham in.

Oh no! Now the old brainbox is getting right out of control and I am getting some folk memories of the football authorities operating the same system for most of the twentieth century by allowing the members of the Football League to re-elect the bottom clubs year after year instead of letting in new entrants. Well, Ministry of Sport, Media and Flower Arranging, where were you when that was happening?
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Grant



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Whenever any journo waxes lyrical about the marvel of the football pyramid, I always remember Darlington coming last in the old fourth division year after year and having to apply for re-election - and always getting it.
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Wile E. Coyote


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The six have just written off a guaranteed "200-250" million pounds a year for life, and they will now be sued for damages, because of a so-called "fan revolt."

That clearly didn't happen.

Wiley's guess is that the top players (supported by agents) who are now much bigger brands than the top clubs' have simply not wanted owners to be allowed to set up a ESL arranged on an American model, with salary caps.
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Mick Harper
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If a conspiracy theory is needed surely the more likely is that the Big Clubs staged the whole thing to get a better deal from UEFA in the ongoing negotiations re the Champions League. I seem to remember we had all this a few years ago prior to it being expanded to include non-Champions i.e. whichever of the Big Clubs hadn't won their league that year but came second, third, fourth but only if ... er ... you happen to be in a Spanish, Italian, German or English league.

Baddiel on Newsnight made the good point that Porto and Ajax weren't even approached. Though generally his Harrumphed of Tunbridge Wells position was by that stage wearisome. My God but didn't everyone queue up to give it a good lashing. The anchors were actually saying, "We couldn't find anyone who had a good word for it" as if that's a good thing. AE-ists know this should not be true.

Watching the American sport networks coverage was a sound corrective. They mostly thought it was a cautiously interesting proposition. As, eventually, do I if -- I agree, if -- it actually played out as planned. I will give my reasons later.
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Mick Harper
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Let's agree on some things

1. The FA Cup and the Caribou Cup are a complete bore
2. The Premier League is too big by at least a coupla clubs
3. All the Big Clubs will continue to have squads of players containing talented players that hardly ever get a run-out. Especially a lot of fringe England players.

So if (1) are axed (or restricted) and (2) is cut, it means that the Premier League can be played on every weekend of the season. It will be like the NFL: Week One, Week Two etc. No midweek matches, no Christmas/Easter games, no games-in-hand, just bim bam bomb, start to finish. Highly satisfying. It's what Series A have been doing forever.

All the Big Clubs (plus a rotating band of Biggish ones) will play a Big Jobs euro-game every mid-week of the season. [All the other clubs are free to play in whatever midweek competitions they want to.] This means in practice that the Big Clubs will have two squads, midweek heavyweights and Saturday makeweights. This will undoubtedly devalue the Premier League somewhat. Or make it more competitive depending as how you look at it. But a lot of this is present de facto now anyway.

Us punters will have 'a Europe week' every week. Come on! That's what we look forward to, so why not have it served up to us on a regular plate? It will also obviate my point about Arsenal vs Man City again, since the Saturday Premier fixture will be Arsenal Minus vs City Minus. And by the way that should be quite a good game because they will be 'teams' of the brightest if not the best.

I'm not saying it's the way ahead but I am saying it's worth a second look.
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Grant



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But would any Euro Super League be ultimately profitable. Don’t people get sick of too much ice-cream? If the super teams played each other mid week every week would we continue to care?
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Mick Harper
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Yes, the 'if every game is special, no game is special' argument. But you are wrong. People don't get sick of ice cream, they eat as much ice cream as they want. The ice cream gets better over the years but only if ice cream itself is left free to get better.

When Britain were nobbut only four games a year were televised: the Amateur Cup Final, the Cup Final, England vs Scotland Schoolboys and England vs Scotland grown-ups. Have we continued to care? When Europe was nobbut we had one club in a knockout competition, now we have four in a league. Have we continued to care?
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Wile E. Coyote


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Mick Harper wrote:
Let's agree on some things

1. The FA Cup and the Caribou Cup are a complete bore
2. The Premier League is too big by at least a coupla clubs
3. All the Big Clubs will continue to have squads of players containing talented players that hardly ever get a run-out. Especially a lot of fringe England players.

So if (1) are axed (or restricted) and (2) is cut, it means that the Premier League can be played on every weekend of the season. It will be like the NFL: Week One, Week Two etc. No midweek matches, no Christmas/Easter games, no games-in-hand, just bim bam bomb, start to finish. Highly satisfying. It's what Series A have been doing forever.

All the Big Clubs (plus a rotating band of Biggish ones) will play a Big Jobs euro-game every mid-week of the season. [All the other clubs are free to play in whatever midweek competitions they want to.] This means in practice that the Big Clubs will have two squads, midweek heavyweights and Saturday makeweights. This will undoubtedly devalue the Premier League somewhat. Or make it more competitive depending as how you look at it. But a lot of this is present de facto now anyway.

Us punters will have 'a Europe week' every week. Come on! That's what we look forward to, so why not have it served up to us on a regular plate? It will also obviate my point about Arsenal vs Man City again, since the Saturday Premier fixture will be Arsenal Minus vs City Minus. And by the way that should be quite a good game because they will be 'teams' of the brightest if not the best.

I'm not saying it's the way ahead but I am saying it's worth a second look.


All true, but the logic is that this has all been driven, not by the so called real fans who go to watch games, but the money from fans who want to watch live football by the best players on TV. That means we you need a game every night featuring the very best teams. The Harper model fails because it does not deliver this. It moves us backwards to the football on a saturday or midweek. We need a fix on Christmas day or even on a day that clashes with a funeral of the monarch.
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