Step 5 Restructuring

[Krooner]

In relation to the promotion places to counter the argument of 3 places to 2 due to the reorganisation you could say that each club currently fights for 1 place and that will not change if it goes to 12 leagues.

[Chris Clapham]

THE FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION

 

 

 

PRESS RELEASE

 

 

 

STEP 5/6 REVIEW

 

 

 

To: all Step 5/6 Leagues and County Football Associations

 

 

 

The Step 5/6 Review Group met at Wembley Stadium on Monday to consider the responses received from County FAs, Leagues, Clubs and others following the recent round of consultative meetings held around the Country.

 

 

 

The Review Group were appreciative of the contributions received to date.

 

 

 

The Review Group will be requesting further information and will meet again on 19 April with a view to finalising their report to the Leagues Committee. An additional meeting of the Leagues Committee will be held in early May to consider this Report.

[Don't Blame Me]

How long does it take for the FA to say "Do as you're ******* told!"?

[bomaya]

Hopefully they will realise this is a [censored] idea and cancel it all together.

[AK11]

I hope so too, Bomaya.

 

Sadly, the FA is not accountable to the fans (in its view). I wouldn't be surprised if they did it 'just because.'

 

Don't forget, it's the same organisation who said no to possibly the greatest manager ever (Brian Clough RIP) becoming England boss but yes to Glenn Hoddle, Kevin Keegan, Steve 'Wally With The Brolly' McClaren and Fabio Capello - a man who looks permanently constipated.

 

The FA and FIFA need scrapping, in my view, and a better system for governing and administering football brought in. Sadly, I suspect I'll have to wait longer for that to happen than my home country of Wales will to lift the Jules Rimmet trophy.

[E&E Rich]

There is one important fact that you are missing here.

 

The FA will not sanction a second promotion place until we get down to 12 step five leagues. Whilst a second place is not part of the current plan, it just can't happen while we have 14.

 

Did you know that technically Guildford could miss promotion this year if there were no higher resignations and 12 other Step Five Champion clubs with a better points coefficient?

 

Of course this is unlikely, but as clubs get better organised this could happen in the not too distant future.

 

So whilst the re-organisation may be inconvenient to some, the alternative actually is less palatable over time.

[bomaya]

As has been said time and time again there are many other ways of solving these problems that wouldn't involve losing leagues/increased travelling costs/teams missing out on promotion. The most obvious way would be to increase the number of Step 5 leagues to 24 with 2 promotion places in each. Even better would be to create an extra 'Midlands' league at Step 2 so that it went from the Conference down 1-3-6-12-24. This would also help with the current North/South imbalance.

[Krooner]

Best way would be to regionlise from League 1 downwards. So

 

Prem

Championship

2 Leagues

4 Leagues

8 Leagues

 

Etc etc. 4 Relegated from each league so that 2 could come up from each league.

 

sorted

[E&E Rich]

In what way does a Midlands step guarantee midland clubs will be in it?

 

Bishops Stortford and Gloucester City would say different and if you can't sort it out at Step 2 you'll always have anomalies lower down.

 

As for 24 leagues with 2 promotion places Bomaya I think you need to do the maths again. There's no way 48 teams could go up, so the most you would ever get (if you could get 24 leagues) would be Champion clubs only and I think we're all agreed that this isn't the way forward.

 

A fourth Step Three league might work, although it should be stressed that this would cause an even bigger reorganisation and upset more people. It also was probably given sufficient consideration when the first restructure was done by the FA and presumably was rejected for a reason.

[CW1975]

Bomaya, I had a quick look at your suggestion as initially I thought it was a good idea. It does seem though that it would knock out steps 6 and 7 of the pyramid as follows :

 

At step 2 you would need to add 22 teams (additional league)

At step 3 you would need to add 66 teams plus the 22 above (3 additional leagues)

At step 4 you would need to add 132 teams plus the 88 above (6 additional leagues)

At step 5 you would need to add 243 teams plus the 220 above (10 additional leagues)

 

This is all based on every league being 22 teams strong. Geographical nightmere and a major reconstruction.

 

I did not look at how many teams at step 6 and 7 to come up as I ran out of time.

 

I may be wrong with these figures. I'm sure someone will put me right though