At face value, it sounds fine - but how often do Championship teams beat SL teams in the cup?

To be honest there is too much of an in-built advantage to the SL team; full time fitter players, professional training and coaching facilities, a team costing the best part of £2m which is playing against higher quality opposing teams on a weekly basis.

I'm not sure I'd consider having better players as an unfair advantage.

The plan is that the top 8 in SL will carry over their points from the first 23 games but the bottom 4 from SL and the top 4 from the division below start again with a clean sheet. They will then play a further 7 games with the championship clubs getting 4 home games. A tough ask but they will see an increase in central funding so the gap will perhaps become closer than it currently is.

Didn't actually say it was 'unfair', it's just a fact, and in that promotion/relegation play-off scenario it pretty much prevents any change taking place. Which imo, rules it out as a way of deciding ups and downs.

That's the bit of these proposals I have the most difficulty with.

All I can see is four SL clubs vying to stuff four Championship clubs by the highest margin so as to win the division. Loads of uncompetitive matches, indeed, [iexactly[/i the sort of games we thought we were getting rid of when we brought in SL, and during which I'm going to be spending time wondering if this is what I thought I was paying for when I bought my season ticket.

Actually, the only way to get any sort of competition might be to let all those clubs keep the points they got in their earlier league, so the Championship clubs would start with more - a bit artificial, but it at least puts the end result in some doubt.