Catch up time:
3rd October -
Steve Bruce (Aston Villa, sacked)
Championship
8th October -
Mark Yates (Macclesfield Town, sacked)
League Two
10th October -
Dean Smith (Brentford, leaves for Aston Villa)
Championship
25th October -
Paul Hurst (Ipswich Town, sacked)
Championship
Sacked - 8
Approaches - 2
Resigned - 1
Total - 11
Interestingly, there was a conveyor belt amongst three clubs pre-season; Ipswich appointed Shrewsbury's Paul Hurst. In turn, Shrewsbury appointed Macclesfield's John Askey and Mark Yates was appointed in his place.
Hurst has been sacked.
Yates has been sacked.
Askey is also under the cosh and might not last much longer.
How unusual is it for clubs who have traded/approached each other's managers to all suffer a terrible start and dismiss them?
Oh, and special mention to
Julen Loputegui (Real Madrid, sacked)
La Liga. No-one outside of Spain had even heard of the man before June and now he's been sacked from two top jobs inside four months. Congratulations once again to Real Madrid for :censored:ing over the entire country on the eve of the World Cup by appointing a manager behind the Spanish FA's back in a way that he breached his own contract. At least it was
totally worth it with the dynasty he's gone on to establish there.
---
European Super League
Anyone heard about this? The long-rumoured breakaway continental division again gained more traction after leaked eMails according to
Der Spiegel. It is worth pointing out that
Der Spiegel is Germany's equivalent of The Sun despite the name ironically meaning The Mirror. Point being, a 16 team division is touted as having been arranged with 11 permanent teams guaranteed a place for 20 years complemented by 5 'guest' teams who may or may not face relegation or exchange with other invited teams. The 11 teams rumoured to be involved are:
Arsenal
Manchester United
Manchester City
Chelsea
Liverpool
Juventus
AC Milan
Real Madrid
Barcelona
Bayern München
Paris SG
Roma, Inter Milan, Atletico Madrid, Borussia Dortmund and Marseille are the initial 5 'guest' teams.
Some thoughts:
a) How incentivising is it to have 11 teams immune from relegation, exchange or expulsion? That would render games pretty meaningless very quickly. Plus you're getting the same games every season. Extremely uninteresting. It's a closed shop within a closed shop. How very American sports league of you.
b) On the same subject, have none of the people involved ever heard of the law of diminishing returns? How many times can you watch Man United vs AC Milan or Paris vs Chelsea in a season or every before getting bored? Not only would games be meaningless with teams not motiviated to succeed due to being guaranteed a place in the division but the games would become boring pretty quickly too due to repetitive fixtures.
Precedence: Celtic vs Rangers. They play each other as much as six times a season due to the two Scottish cups.
c) This goes behind the backs of each club's respective national associations as well as the ECA and UEFA, although I'm sure UEFA and the ECA wouldn't be too displeased to see this happen. In fact, I'm sure they privately support it.
d) It's a slap in the face to other "big teams" who didn't make it; teams with more history and relevance to continental competitions. Yes, it's trivial but no Portuguese or Dutch teams who have a bit more 'tradition' in these competitions. Manchester City get a guaranteed 20 year place in the league despite having been extremely underwhelming in the Champions League every season since they became a relevant team 7 years ago? Rubbish.
e) A friend of mine who disagrees with the SL but agrees that the CL needs revamping said "Yeah but who wants to watch Man United vs Basel? Nobody." That is
so patronising and narrow-minded. Basel fans. Basel fans want to see that game. What do these 'small' teams offer? They offer a lot to their own fans and their town. If they're good enough to have qualified for the division or competition then you can't complain. Same goes for "What do Huddersfield offer to the Premier League?" Well, absolutely
everything to their fans and a lot of other people not even football related in West Yorkshire.
I hate that Look Down view of big teams' fans. Unbridled arrogance.
Summary
Let them do it. Football is
already behind a paywall so put this behind a double level 2 super paywall and have sparse attendances for the same games over and over. It
might leave national competitions in the hands of those who might actually give a damn about it.
I hate the idea of a Super League but if these teams sod off and I can stop hearing about them so much because they'll be on channels or packages I don't watch, then good.
At the same time, it
is a logical progession and I am simply recalcitrant to what has been an otherwise accurate geographical scope; local teams form regional leagues (The Football League), then those leagues go national (inclusion of southern teams); you play-off against other national leagues' teams once in a while (Wolves vs Honved, Wolves vs Celtic, Wolves vs Spartak Moscow) and expand to having regular, supplementary competitions (European Cup, Champions League) and this will ultimately lead to a continental division like in rugby (Pro14) and ice hockey (KHL).
I suppose the reason I'm resistant to it is because the idea that it's being done for footballing reasons is so transparent. It's an obvious cash-grab with no thought to the quality of the game or the progression of the sport. That and there is way too much continental football already; these competitions need to contract, not expand, but try telling that to UEFA.
For the English system, you can directly trace this all to Manchester United not competing in the 1999/00 FA Cup. That was the beginning of the end for national competitions being relevant.
