I came across this video on YouTube about the possibility of regionalising Leagues 1 and 2 after Covid-19.
This is the first I’ve heard of it. Anyone got any more information, and what do you think about the possibility?
Well you may get bigger crowds as games are in a more closer radius ( not that would work for Walsall) and it would save a Tuesday night away game trek to say Exeter. Would definitely take away the variety of opposition and fan set ups though…
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Happened during the war. We had Div 3 North and Div 3 South from 1921 until 1958. We’ve been in both, mostly North before the war and South afterwards until we ended up in the new Div 4 in 1958. Not certain it is the long term solution now though. But might work for a couple of seasons if needed for financial reasons.
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Would also have to decide if one or two were promoted from each and would the playoffs be separate or combined of the two.
Champions of each plus the winner of the combined playoff would keep it at three but could make it really difficult to escape the league. Also would it be one or two down from each and 2 or 4 coming up from the conference?
Not the worst idea though.
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Saw something about it the other day suggesting splitting League 2 into 2 pools of 12 (with us in the northern half), but in the last couple of days it has turned into talk of combining League 1 & 2 into a single regional level feeding into the Championship (in which we’d be in the southern half).
Apparently some clubs living hand to mouth (like Fleetwood) have been floating the idea, but why would comparatively big clubs like Ipswich, Portsmouth, Bolton, Sunderland etc want to regionalise with smaller fry and fewer promotion places?
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If they went with the North/South divide, we’d wind up with either Carlisle or Plymouth, either way. By the same principle that we’ve played both Preston and Bournemouth in the “area” final of the same competition, we’d be prime candidates to bounce from one side of the divide to the other, season after season, depending on who went up and down, potentially being in the same “regionalised” division as Orient, but a different one to Vale, despite being at the same level at the same time.
It’d make more of a guaranteed difference for the likes of Fleetwood than us, Shrews, Vale, Burton, & Cov.
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Or three leagues of 16 teams - Northern, Southern, and Midlands? That way we don’t end up yo-yoing between North and South. But not sure how promotion, relegation play-offs would/could work. In the end we’ll get what the premier league want us to have.
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I don’t like the idea at all, it would be rubbish being in the southern division when you’re located in the North. Its a 3 hour journey to a home game for me as it is. Same goes for any southern based fans if we were in the northern division.
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Could not agree more. A terrible idea (even if we ended up in the North) it would be a step backwards.
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How come? They pay big wages in league 1 in comparison to their income. Has their own started cutting his cloth?
Appears so - https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/regionalisation-answer-stop-league-one-18142658.amp
Got a hazy memory of a proposal when the Premiereship as it was once called was formed of a 100 team league of 5×20 divisions with the third tier being North, Midlands and South. Fraught with problems as only the champions promoted and although our travel would be eased the likes of Plymouth could still be off to Colchester etc and no days at the seaside for Saddlers.
Always Cleethorpes.
Oh yes that would be a possible. Not been there bu t did do Scunny in October 67 when a 5-2 win took us to the top of the league. Colin Taylor, Jimmy Murray, Alan Baker and Jimmy Mcmorran amongst others. Was at Hull Uni at the time.
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This pops around every decade or so.
Then someone does some sums and it goes away again.
So you plot all the clubs in the bottom two divisions and stick the 24 most Northern in one league and the 24th most southern in the other. Then you realise that there are quite a lot in the middle bit of the country who will have a line drawn through them. Walsall possibly lose Vale but gain Gillingham. Similarly Burton lose Coventry but gain Carlisle.
Therefore for quite a few clubs in the middle bit of the country, travelling will increase across the season and some lucrative local derbies disappear.
Then as @Allinh describes there’s a realisation that the bottom bit of the country is actually quite wide. So yes Plymouth lose the much vaunted six hour trip to Carlisle but they gain the 4hr 30 trip to Gillingham and keep the 4 hr 45 trip to Colchester.
So then you look at the North and good news for fans of regionalisation in that because the country is narrower, the lower league northern outliers of Carlisle and Sunderland have big travel savings. Other than their proximity to each other they are over an hour away from the nearest teams, which means that everybody other than Sunderland and Carlisle are an hour closer to each other, so whilst there are some decent treks for say a Morecambe going to Colchester, it isn’t the other side of the world.
So then you go “■■■■ it - unless you’re Carlisle this whole thing is barely worth the effort”. That, nearly like the country, it is about as wide as it is long. As you were.
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If the issue is primarily financial, chopping & changing the structure of the league seems to me to be the proverbial sledgehammer cracking a nut.
There are squillions of pounds sloshing around in football as a whole. Could there be a travel grant from the FA for clubs who meet pittance criteria?
Alternatively, cut the south western ‘leg’ off England, sellotape it to the Irish sea and call it Sodor. The British Isles could then be renamed the British Blob.
According to Leigh Pomletts interview on the official site the north/south regionalisation has not been mentioned whatsoever in any EFL meetings
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That’s good to know.