“Since everything is set up to benefit the big six, what good is it to try to compete with them?”
Those in positions of responsibility at football teams and leagues should take note of these remarks. Malaise can be detrimental when your product relies on emotion; we witnessed it happen to the club last season when it started early and they eventually dropped to the lower leagues.
The final table* Essentially, we still don’t know what the purpose of these next nine games is. The majority of us are aware that returning to the Premier League’s wealth and reestablishing financial stability is the simplest route out of this predicament, even for those who doubt the value of getting promoted.
There’s still a chance, though, that these championship games won’t have the significance we believe them to have because of claims that the Premier League and the EFL are both pushing—quite surprisingly considering the timeframes involved—for a points reduction to apply this season.
And that’s what’s caused the anxiety that’s currently circulating throughout the fan base. As a football fan, you can count on Saturday at 3pm, even when things like great players might be departing, promotion or relegation is in the balance, or the ownership of a club is uncertain (actually, you can’t rely on that any more either, but you get the idea).
The Premier League this season will already create an entirely fictitious league table, with on-field performance having no bearing on the division’s total number of points. Points being deducted and then added back on appeal gives the appearance that the table was decided off the field.
It appears that a relatively weak group of recently promoted teams may be able to save the authorities since it would be absurd if Everton or Nottingham Forest continued to play their current level after these deductions and reinstatements. A league table with more asterisks than Nigel Pearson’s press conference is already a joke. Ask Andros Townsend, please.
The notion that you could give up a lead in the last minutes or withstand a few late attacks from teams that keep crossing the box at “difficult places to go,” and those two points are equivalent to someone writing the word “mitigation,” is absurd, considering that the last ten or so years could still be forgotten due to a team.
