Fao Fellow Sexagenerians

No, what I'm saying is that I don't think it has in fact been 'open and unpredictable' for many years.

All three newly promoted sides survived as recently as last season.

And yes, I'm happy to take your bet on Brighton.

 

I suppose it depends what you mean by "really open and unpredictable".
Either way it it clearly less/fewer open and unpredictable than it used to be.

 

Ah yes-L*t*n had just been promoted from Div 4 and around 6,000 present for his first testimonial-only 55 years ago !!

 

Ha ha....that's true, but I still can't believe it was only 4 years ago when we were actually good. The time then seems like 20 years ago as how far we've dropped since then is alarming. Just goes to show what happens when you're starved of investment (or rather starved of investment in the right areas).

 

It’s not really possible to make direct comparisons across different eras. The players you refer to had the benefit of playing on pitches resembling billiard tables; the team from the 80s had to play most of the time on bobble-inducing, strength sapping mud heaps, until they dried out into something akin to corrugated steel surfaces. They were also expected to do it for 90 minutes with only sub allowed. And they produced great skills whilst being subjected to persistent ‘tackling’ which today would lead to immediate yellow if not red cards. The ‘dangerous follow-through’ that sees so many red cards nowadays back then was almost the required way to complete a tackle. If the bloke getting tackled ended up smashing into the advertising hoardings, even better! At least he’d ‘know you were there’. The whole game has changed so much that direct comparisons mean little.
I find it hard to accept that such as Barnes, Blissett, Callaghan, Jackett, Rostron would not have excellent careers in today’s EPL if that was the structure they came into.
I think a mythical game between the 2 teams would end up being a close run thing, maybe hinging on whether the more recent side were able to handle the incessant harrying and pressure they’d come up against.

 

You are being disingenuous as more than one poster has commented that even those clubs you highlight as ‘established’ only need two bad windows and a bad injury list and they will likely be relegated. Leicester being a prime example.

 

But the point remains that we never got close to the achievement of our 1st top flight season again, and it only took one disastrous appointment to see us relegated.

 

I'm not sure what that proves other than that GT was a magician and Pozzo doesn't really know what he is doing.

Brentford had their highest ever league finish since 1936 last year, and finished above Chelsea.

Brighton finished sixth - but apparently you can predict the top six before the season starts.

 

By ‘authorities’, I assume you mean the other PL clubs.

As we, along with the other ‘minnows’ clapped through the revised rules on how the money from the worldwide broadcasting was assigned a few years back. The big boys threw their weight around and the other clubs bottled it as they were scared of a Superleague - which they then tried to form anyway. I don’t think any PL rules are changed without a majority vote.

The non-big clubs are happy to hoover up the financial crumbs left by the ‘big 6’ and are just as culpable for the state of the domestic game.

No self respecting owner should allow the situation that the ‘big 6’ are broadcast live domestically 99% of weekends. But they do.

 

...also the clubs named as "established", at the end of last season had been "established" for 3, 6, 10, 1 and 1 seasons so far !

 

The main point under discussion I believe is whether a ‘smaller’ club can become fully established in the EPL over 15 seasons…to be fair Palarse are giving it a good go, but I remain to be convinced BHA, Flam, Muff etc will achieve it.

 

Is it? Isn't the choice of 15 seasons rather arbitrary? On that basis Citeh are only just an established club, and Newcastle clearly are not.

 

I know, but neither can be termed a ‘small’ club and even those two could never be termed ‘established’ until a country became their owner. That is almost the point: IF a sovereign wealth fund bought us and was willing to pour billions in, we would expect to get into the EPL and remain quite secure. I’d suggest the wealth behind us would mean we’d no longer be a ‘small’ club as such.
I chose 15 years as being a period of time which, if a club remained consistently in the EPL, could constitute being ‘established’ as I’m not sure 10 years is long enough. You may think it is, in which case, fair enough. It’s a better measure than 3 or 4 years, as we proved.

 

So we were not an 'established' top flight club in the 1980s either?

Plus ca change...

 

Yes indeed. Which is exactly the same as it's ever been.

 

One of the most frustrating things about modern football is that the moment you do put a good side together, they're picked off by bigger clubs. Half a season of good performances and any promising young player is halfway out the door.

You can't really see a team grow anymore. You need your players to be putting in 6/7 out of ten performances every week so that they're doing a good enough job for you but not getting enough attention to be snapped up. But then if you do manage to get promoted by keeping a group together, that 6/7 out of ten in the Championship is a 3/4 out of ten player in the Premier League as that lot from up the road are finding out (ok, that's quite funny).

 

Except the attempts nowadays to ‘be competitive’ have placed many more clubs at financial risk…including ourselves.

 

Clearly not, QED.
The point is, I don’t think we have ever fully established ourselves in the top flight. 14 seasons over 4 spells during more than 40 years would support that view.

 

But I thought the claim being made was that it is harder now for a 'smaller' club to establish itself in the top flight than it used to be?

All this proves is that it has always been difficult, well certainly within the living memory of most of us on here.

Where I think you are on more solid ground is in respect of the greater financial risk entailed in making the attempt.

 

Money always talks. We wouldn't have marched through the leagues without Elton's backing (though GTs genius may have been enough).

I'd argue the premier League riches have opened up the top league to more teams than previously, not fewer.

What would you prefer, that purchasing power is based on gate receipts? Or that you can only have players from within the town's catchment area? By either of those measures we'd be absolutely fuc ked.

 

It's always been difficult but is certainly harder now. Think back to when Wimbledon, Luton, ourselves, Oxford, Oldham FFS, Portsmouth, Notts Co, Stoke, Norwich QPR, Reading, Millwall etc all survived for at least a season or two in the top flight. It wasn't just the variety of size of teams in the league, it was that the order of clubs in the top flight was also less predictable. Many of those sides finished pretty high up the table.

 

Yes, my main point is that smaller clubs have to take many more financial risks now, often to win promotion, but certainly in their attempts to stay up.
But it used to be more feasible for smaller clubs to get up & stay up…Burnley through the 50s and 60s, Coventry for 34 seasons after 1967, Ipswich for about 17 seasons in the 60s & 70s…none of them splurged loads of money but managed to be competitive whilst slowly building and strengthening…I just don’t think that is very likely now….not impossible, just very, very unlikely.
And Burnley & Ipswich won the league during those years, with a significant number of the squad that got promoted still playing.

I think we would still be in the EPL if Pozzo had bought 2 quality CBs instead of Sarr, but for a club such as us it only takes one huge f..up like that to see it all unravel. Citeh, Liverpool, the Arse etc can afford one like that every window and still not go down.

 

And Brighton finished sixth last year, and Brentford ninth. Two clubs which are historically smaller than several of those you list here.

Look, there is some validity in the basic point being made, but I do think, as RC has said, that you and others are tending to forget how much the big clubs still dominated even back then. Liverpool were pretty relentless when I was growing up, for example (except for the few seasons when it was Everton).

 

I doubt your second point would stand analysis, at least not in the context of being competitive and not in financial jeopardy.
I’d also question the degree to which Elton ‘bankrolled’ our success. Obviously he brought more funds than Bonser but a lot of the success was based on GT’s coaching getting so much out of existing players (Jenkins, Blissett), a fantastic conveyor belt of youth team players who he trusted to play (Callaghan, Jackett, Terry, Gibbs etc) and very shrewd bargain purchases. For every Steve Sims you could offer Ian Bolton, Dennis Booth, Les Taylor as low cost purchases who massively over-delivered. As we currently see, any promising youth player we unearth is stolen via the EPPP, another big club ruse to stop smaller clubs developing competitive squads.

I fully agree with your point that previous structures of wealth distribution always favoured the bigger clubs; the point at issue is that the balance has now swung so far in their favour, English football is in danger of eating itself.

 

But how long will they perform at that level is the question if we are discussing becoming ‘established’

 

Well, we don't know yet do we? But TUT was talking about high finishes for clubs who 'all survived for at least a season or two in the top flight'. Those two have done that.

 

I think its true there were eras where Liverpool dominated but there was variety in the top 6 or 7 clubs.
Look at the top 3 between 1970-2000 and then from 2000 onwards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_football_champions

 

So we're discussing different things!

 

Well he is...

 

Yes, using WFC was a mistake. The advantage of having GT as manager was immeasurable.

 

I suppose the same could be said about Bobby Robson at Ipswich.

 

My happiest times following the club were with GT in charge and police dogs between us and the away fans in the Rookery at every game. Obviously I don't want my own son to experience darts and batteries being thrown at us whilst the dogs were howling away, but then again we used to have a football team.

 

Bourmemouth are in the process of being disestablished and Brentford will follow. Palace and Fulham may have a few years left, admittedly - and Brighton have got what we had at Watford in the early 80s. I'm a massive Brighton fan for the time being.

 

What do you mean?

 

The fact is there are more minnows in the top league right now than at any other time I can remember.