Quote: Ferocious Aardvark "At the risk of being accused that I really and honestly don't have a fscking clue and have always been just winging it, from madcap idea to madcap idea, it's more like the Mr. fsckin' Micawber forum .
Never a risk of that, FA, we have to read your posts.
But one thing surely ANYONE can plainly see is replacing pretty much ANY of the top teams with Toronto and Toulouse is well on the road to killing the league off, as there you would be left (for now, before Beirut, Port Stanley and Panama join) with a mere 9 (yes NINE) UK clubs and it shouldn't (and indeed doesn't) take some guy on a forum to point out the economic suicide consequences of that sort of league.
I dont recall the Dragons going bust several times in several years.
We have dangerously few top level teams even now - to be left with a mere sprinkling, all still concentrated around a few mile stretch, is heading for irrelevance and will ultimately sideline the game altogether.
An amazing reversal of logic even for you. So Whitehaven are suddenly going to find 10000 fans and a billionaire sugar daddy?
If they replace them on merit, eg Toulouse beat Wakefield or Leigh in the MPG (or equivalent) for example, that ensures that a top team is replacing a not top team and there are still 12 top teams, not 9. and Wakefield increase the competition in the Championship. Did you vote for Brexit btw? And thats a rhetorical question.
Even European soccer can't fund an international league, they rely for their bread and butter on bigging up stronger and stronger domestic leagues. Do you see any Toulouses or Torontos in the PL (or indeed in ANY of the divisions of the football pyramid? I wonder why not, if its such a good idea?
Swansea and in previous years Cardiff. Name any other team in the Welsh football league or whatever it is called. Ok Wrexham had a go at it, dont know where they are now. I was gobsmacked when Rangers decided to take the short term view and not apply for our football league, but I guess there is that traditional old firm stuff two games a season that gets in the way of commercial commonsense. Who have Swansea been signing for this season compared to Celtic and Rangers? I need to do my research but at a guess their most expensive signing this season would buy the whole Celtic or Rangers team.
So to shorten my rhetorical question - WHAT IS the plan, if there is one? I mean, having 2 French teams (and now 1 Canadian) in our comps surely can't be the AIM, so what is the POINT? As in, what are we trying to achieve? People say Catalans have been a success story, and in many ways they have, but the same question applies, what is the point, where is that going? If Catalans are meant to be a permanent fixture in English RL, then what is the plan for the French leagues? Surely the only sensible point of Catalans and Toulouse would be the eventual aim of them returning, Celtic & Rangers like, to a stronger French league built on their foundations?
THis is supposed to be the shortening of a rhetorical (previously asked a million times) question? Damn, practice does not make perfect. Actually, no sorry it was perfect!
But if that isn't the plan, then we seem to be heading for some weird, but surely doomed, short-term international league, paid for out of the pockets of outsiders, which can't last, and will kill off the English clubs that are replaced, as it has all but killed off Bradford.
On what basis do you say surely, and on what basis do you say that English clubs will be killed off? Are you OM Shipton? Will the world be covered in ice and phlegm (cant quite remember the words!) when it comes to an end? And I thought mismanagement had killed off Bradford?
It's not the principle of involvement of overseas teams in some ways in some comps that I object to, it's the total and risible lack of any sort of a plan, and the damage this short-termist seat-of-the-pants way of running a competition is doing and will do to the game in this country.
So why all the foregoing bulls, just take the pills and accept that they have not let you into their big secret?
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As for me, I believe that they have accepted that sugar daddies wherever they are are an acceptable short term way of getting more money competition and fans into the game, and that will have benefits down the chain for the non sugar daddy, local clubs that care to share in it. No histrionic melodrama for me.
