We must cut top flight to 18 teams

ENGLAND’s top clubs don’t care much for the domestic cups. We know that from the teams they field and the things they say.

But it’s not smaller cup competitions English football needs but a smaller Premier League.

The top tier of English football is supposed to be elite. That’s the sell. But it’s misleading.

The quality at the top is terrific but at the bottom end the Premier League is rotten. The football is rubbish and has been for a decade. standards near the foot of the table don’t justify a 20-team league. The only motivating factor for the status quo is money.

since the 2011-12 season, the average number of points the team relegated in 20th position has amassed is a miserable 24. Only once during that time has a club mustered more than 30. That was West Brom with 31 four seasons ago.

Last year sheffield United went down with 23. The year before Norwich won only 21. Prior to that Huddersfield earned only 16. This season? Well, Norwich the floor is yours once again.

so the pattern is clear and the argument for a Premier League of, say, 18 clubs begins to harden.

There are contributing factors to this malaise. The controversial parachute payment continues to be one. Teams coming up from the Championship know relegation will not kill them. The money they bank gives them a head start coming back up. Hence teams like Fulham, Norwich and West Brom exist reasonably comfortably as what we call ‘yo-yo’ clubs.

Executives at some top clubs do think something may give in time. They envisage an 18-team league. Quite how that would come to pass while any change has to be agreed by 14 of the 20 member clubs is hard to fathom but the concept does at least exist in people’s minds.

In terms of spectators of the Premier League, they are short changed a little and so are the TV companies. Much of what is provided by clubs at the wrong end of the table is turgid and, more damningly, just not remotely competitive enough.

An 18-team league would allow the fixture calendar to breathe. It is too congested and that is dangerous. If something goes wrong — as we have seen during the current Covid outbreak — then the squeeze affects every single competition.

But the modern thinking that it’s the cups that have to change to create room is quite wrong. It is only the Premier League clubs — and some of the more ambitious teams in the Championship — who really think this.

Look at attendances in the FA Cup this weekend.

There were 52,000 at Newcastle, 40,000 at Chelsea, 16,000 at Hull, almost 17,00 at Millwall and 8,000 at Port Vale and Yeovil. The wild away-end scenes as Cambridge won at st James’ Park and even when Chesterfield scored just once in a big defeat at stamford Bridge illustrate that in the hearts and minds of those who really matter — the supporters — the FA Cup remains alive and well and important.

Football is about hopes and dreams and friendship and shared experiences and escapism. The FA Cup, and to a lesser extent the League Cup, continues to give us that. The Premier League? Yes, that too but not always as much as we like to think.

The cups have taken enough of a kicking as the football landscape continues to change. It’s time to look for some give somewhere else.