Couch Potato has a bone to pick with the Premier League and he tells us why from the Couch!!
Are the Premier League Nuts? Well top-flight clubs will now be allowed to pick any player in their 25-man matchday squad without fear of sanction from the Premier League.
One person certainly aint happy about this and that’s our own Couch Potato!
He tells us why!!
**************************************
They will come to regret it.
You mark my words.
They will come to regret this further abdication of authority by an independent body supposed to be running the game in the interests of more than the reigning elite to the turkeys that have indeed never voted for Christmas but always just wanted the power and money of the Premier League for themselves.
What am I am talking about? Well read this from the BBC website first and them I will explain:
The Premier League has changed their rules on so-called ‘weakened’ teams. Top-flight clubs will now be allowed to pick any player in their 25-man matchday squad without fear of sanction from the Premier League… The 20 Premier League clubs agreed at their AGM in early June that any combination of players named in their registered 25-man squads will be able to start a match. The head of communications at the Premier League Dan Johnson confirmed that all the clubs were in favour of the rule change.
The rule has not been totally withdrawn, and clubs will still be at risk of a fine if they select a number of younger players from outside their 25-man squad.
Last November, Blackpool drew 2-2 at home to Everton, before Holloway then made 10 changes to his starting line up for a match at Aston Villa four days later. Blackpool lost the match at Villa Park 3-2, with Holloway giving six players their first start in the Premier League. Holloway defended his selection, saying at the time: ‘I’ve got every right to do what I like.’
Has the whole point of demanding the carroty red head of Rebekah Brooks over the hacking scandal not been about making sure that those with power also face up to their responsibilities?
But in the world of elite football, increasingly distanced from the day-to-day lives of everyday folk, the me-me-me mentality once again wins out over justice, the rule of law, and the setting of good examples to kids growing up on Britain’s increasingly mean streets that, even if the government’s no longer looking out for you, you should still be looking out for your neighbour.
Stand by for a rash of games in which the minnows throw games against the big boys, in the name of squad development and resting up for the only games that actually matter to them, in the head-to-head fights to avoid relegation.
I can only think the PL clubs have thought they might get away with this total lack of respect to paying punters, based on a view that the perhaps mortally wounded Rupert Murdoch hasn’t got the bottle any more to fight for value and standards in what he has paid so handsomely for. And that folks is what used to be called entertainment
Ler me know what you think below this article
Couch Potato
Well said. Last season when people were backing the oaf Holloway, I said those rules were there for a reason. Exactly as the author suggests, we are now going to get skewed results and predictable games, when clubs alter their first eleven dependant on opposition. Totally and utterly ridiculous.
What else do we expect for god’s sake?????
Its rediculous. Obvcourse all 20 premier league teams voted for it. The best teams can have even easier opposition to play as they will be playing against worse teams reserves, and the worse teams can save their best players for the crucial ‘six pointers’ to avoid relegation. Its a decision that should be entirely in the FA’s hands and nothing to do with the premier league clubs. It takes so much away from the enternainment purposes of the game.
It’s a step closer to what we’ve known for years. The premiership will eventually be split into 2 or possibly 3 ‘leagues’. The first will be the elitist top 5/6 who nearly broke away to the European league not so long ago. The second section will be the established mid-tablers who are constantly on the lookout for a rich benefactor to elevate their standing, and the last but more interesting group in my view will be those fighting to stay in the premiership money trough. Your predictions about throwing games for survival will come true Couch, there will be a Wolves debacle every Saturday, Sunday, Monday and errrrr – whatever other days Sky decide to televise this nonsense.
What are we saying? The Championship represents the best competition whereas the Premiership is so full of strategy off the field it’s getting boring? Surely not. BUT if you do well in one you end up in the other (Bugger). Why do we turn out on Saturdays then? More to the point are those big guns at the “top” brand names or football teams? I sincerely hope no influential group at claret and blue HQ ever buys into this type of crap. Otherwise we may as well head to Old Trafford?
Well said Couch, another nail in the coffin of what was “the peoples” sport. The Premiership was the worst thing that ever happened to football in England. The FA, totally useless at controlling the despots of the Prem.
A curious thing… this decision was made at a PL meeting in JUne. But it only got announced on the day Brooks resigned and Murdoch grovelled.
And another thing… if you watched the weird but fascinating TV documentary by Curtis Davies (I think his name is) on the BBC recently called All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, you’ll have learned that one of the biggest spontaneous rapid migrations of people in history was when something like half a million of America’s youth left home in the 60s to live underneath geodesic domes in what they hoped would be self-regulating societies without power or hierarchies. Love and peace? Lovely idea, and it was doubtless great fun at first. What then happened was that the bullies took over and everyone went home to Mum and Dad. The myth of benificent self-regulating groups without power and laws really should have died then (or after we all read Lord of the Flies). But it now lives on in the PL as a front for the bullying and greed of the unopposable few. For goodness sakes, even in America the clubs in the big sports leagues sign up to give almost absolute power to control their games to the commissioners, kept in check just by the clubs’ right to vote them out of office and put a new commissioner in their place.
Enforcing the rule is a major problem that the Premier League have – Managers could quite easily say that they are resting a player due to fatigue, out of form, sore toe, felt ill overnight etc etc. Unless it is as blatant as what Blackpool/Wolves did it is difficult to prove. If they rest 1 player, presumably this is OK. What about two? What about three? Where does it cross the line?
Great thought provoking stuff Couch and wise comments above. Perhaps in time we will adopt a similar system to the sweaty socks and split the PL at Christmas thereby having 10 teams playing for European glory and 10 to avoid Chumpionship drop? However once the TV only start showing the top 10 matches it wil be no better than Portugal where each weekend you can watch live Sporting, Porto and Benfica because they always show them because it gets the viewers and advertisers but drives away the fans to the…….wait for it………….COUCH!!
There are very few absolute rights and wrongs over points of detail in life or in sport; and I fear that if the first game of football had been played under CD’s loving care it would still be going on, with arguments raging to this day over whether or not the ball had gone out, and whether or not it was a penalty. Which is why it was agreed to accept the ref’s word as final, and why – when clubs enter into contracts to join sporting leagues and associations – they traditionally give the authority to settle disputes to the head of the organising body, and agree to accept their decisions even if they don’t completely agree with them. It’s worked well for nigh on 150 years.