Talksport article reaction
https://twitter.com/bluntphil/status/1268180367342739460?s=20
Our own Mr Catchpole, invites Adrian Durham on the next Ringing the Blues podcast to talk it over!
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https://twitter.com/bluntphil/status/1268180367342739460?s=20
Our own Mr Catchpole, invites Adrian Durham on the next Ringing the Blues podcast to talk it over!
Comments
From the time that the season was suspended my feeling has been that it was not going to be possible to play out the remaining games. The reasons (safety, financial, player contracts etc) have already been discussed at length. That has left the EFL with the no win situation of how to decide the outcome of the season. Whatever the decision, somebody is going to be unhappy. My feeling has always been that they should have made the decision and warned that any legal challenge would result in a points deduction.
However, the EFL decided to give the clubs the opportunity to make suggestions and vote on the matter. It should surprise nobody that all clubs will vote in their own best interests. Some clubs have decided to threaten legal action before the vote has taken place.
So lets look at the Adrian Durham piece. The main thrust of it seems to be that Peterborough will be treated unfairly because they are in great form. Really? Over what period have Peterborough been in such great form that they deserve a play off place? In their last three games they had a win, a draw and a loss - hardly great form (and 2 points worse than WWFC). Over the last five games they had three wins, a draw and a loss - not bad but not great (and still only one point better than WWFC). Perhaps their good form has been since the New Year, or for ten games, or some other period that suits Adrian Durham.
Surely the whole point of a league is that the final positions are decided by form over the season, not just one good run, so in the absence of being able to complete the season the fairest (but not perfect) method is PPG.
He then gets into the questioning the ethics of arguing against playing out the season, but playing in the playoffs. The simple answer is cost. The cost of playing (at most three games) BCD, is far less than playing nine or ten games with playoffs to follow.
My personal opinion is that there should be no playoffs. If that means that only the teams in the automatic positions go up, so be it. But it's not my decision, and whatever the outcome, it will be decided by the majority of clubs, not just WWFC.
Yep, completely agree @bluenotes. Aside from the very real financial and health implications of playing out the remaining games, the season is now so severely compromised, that we'd effectively be playing a different season. It's clear you'd end up with sides voiding or playing youngsters, so this so called sporting integrity arguement goes out of the window.
I also agree that there's very little point in the play offs. Scrapping these and reducing promotion/relegation by 1 would solve the Tranmere problem (presumably keeping Adrian Durham happy, as of course he's far more concerned with their fate than his beloved Peterborough) and would also prevent clubs sneaking what would be percieved as an unfair and cheap promotion.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but I've been interested to read Grimsby's stance that no football should be played behind closed doors. I'm becoming inclined to agree with this, as football is soulless without the atmosphere created by the fans.
How is Adrian Durham's view any more valid then any other supporter posting on social media. He's a shock jock who's never moved on from click bait.
I really can't see how Adrian Durham finds the financial implications so questionable. Clubs play out entire seasons in front of crowds and loose money. How would playing BCD improve that?
I strongly object to his hypocrisy argument (taken totally out of context). RC said that McCarthy had returned to his parent club because we can't afford to keep him. He went on to say about staff finding other employment. He was making the point there may be tough decisions to make to ensure the club survives. Nobody foresaw the current state of affairs, but he will take the necessary (if perhaps unpopular) decisions to ensure the club survives. That's the job he took on. It's not about this season and playoffs.
Whether or not the play-offs go ahead - and I would expect them to - the EFL will not take away a promotion place. Do that in one division and you have to do it in all of them or you end up with the wrong number of teams. I've changed my stance on this, but if worse comes to worst and third place has to go up automatically, so be it.
Agree @bluenotes the problem with everything nowadays from the top down is that people who are paid very well to make decisions seem to be terrified of doing it in case someone does not like it. The 'big clubs' have patently failed to make their mark on the league this term so I can understand their pain and I would have been disappointed if the decision had been made to just promote the top three, especially as one of them would have been Oxford, when we had been so close for so long and had games in hand and a promising final straight...but given the circumstances and the fact the season was really totally compromised it would have been hard to argue. This present situation has just dragged on and on and given the armies of loudmouth owners and clickbait gobshites a platform to stir up bad feeling.
I will take play-offs if that's the result with pleasure but also agree playing without fans is not football for me.
@bluenotes @Wendoverman Isn't the point that the Football League (let's give it its proper title) is a members organisation? So constitutionally, all the clubs will have a right to a say on exceptional events like these. "The EFL" is not the executive, or the Board, it is all the members.
So suggesting that the executive, or the Board should just get on and decide what happens misses the point that they can't. And indeed shouldn't be able to.
@our_frank oh bloody hell...so their whole job is just to ask all the clubs from Championship though to League Two what they want to do? I did not realise that.
The EFL need their share of blame unfortunately, we still don't really know how this will finish, if they're allowing multiple votes on all options or trying to suggest what happens and then taking votes on their preferred option, either way it's taking so long that if the vote was to carry on we probably wouldn't have enough time before contracts expire. Their shambolic guidance generally has contributed to the state many clubs found themselves in prior to this kicking in.
BTW of all the clubs and fans moaning about this that and the other being unfair nobody seems to think us being in 8th due to having played two games less than some clubs is in anyway unfair.
@our_frank The point you make is a fair one. My main concern is not how the decision is reached, but that the decision is accepted and binding on all clubs without legal challenge or bitterness between clubs and fans.
If the majority of clubs are happy to settle for PPG (which reflects over all performance across the season to date) then it is not the fault of one club as to who gains and who loses out.
@Wendoverman They've got to lead, obviously, and as others have argued hereabouts, they've done that without much clarity of direction. But to say, "they should have made the decision", as @Bluenotes did above seems to me to miss the point that it is not for them to decide. That's the clubs' job and the obvious difficulty in League One is there's no real consensus among the clubs.
Having said that, the current apparent free-for-all is massively unhelpful.
As no decision has yet been made I cannot work out why all these people are wasting their energy. As I said, I'll take whatever decision is made but it sort of makes you want to make their worst nightmares come true .
Some of the responses on that trail are infuriating. You wonder how seriously dense people are.
Even Coventry drawing with Bolton's walkover kids is written off as "well, Coventry dominated and should have won". Yeah, but they didn't!
It is a shame we didn't have a game in the last round of fixtures, well as long as we got a result that kept us in the top 6 obviously
That would have totally shutdown all the moans
It is very frustrating trying to reason with them. I started to question my own understand of PPG, but having looked again, I'm fairly convinced there is no predicting of results. So why this misunderstanding about it amongst not just fans, but also by some media?
The thing I would find funniest in all this is how big clubs are so willing to mess around smaller clubs by postponing games based upon some 18 year olds getting called up for Singapore, New Zealand and Ecuador, but they may now lose out owing to games in hand. I know this is not the reason we did not play Coventry, but it is still a little amusing to think of the irony.
An excellent point.
In fairness to Sunderland, their call-ups were all full internationals for Northern Ireland and Scotland.
Well, I can see a scenario where the "big" clubs will squabble like feral cats when a decision is made that doesn't suit their agenda. They will consult their legal advisors, delaying the process, then there will not be enough time to get their way anyway!
Debatable that Scotland national team warrants that status right now
Fair point actually
Watching the 1996 Euros, and Scotland had many players who were household names. These days the Scotland squad has players who aren't even household names in their own homes.
Andy Robertson is probably the only one