Once more unto the breach…
The above headline may have had you spluttering over your chocolate fingers at breakfast this morning, but that quite frankly, should teach you to buy the Daily Mirror. This site and Stanley Victor Collymore have what could be described as form, and yet again, our intense admiration for Collymore the player, has degenerated into scorn for Stan the pundit.
Let’s take a closer look at today’s thoughts:
The Premier League is considered by many to be the best league in the world but I think drastic reform is needed to keep it at the pinnacle.
In some of the finest Schools of Journalism, they teach that a good way to indicate you are about to waste a few minutes of your reader’s time, is to make the opening sentence nonsensical, thus hinting to the reader to go and do something else. Here Stan delivers, pointing out that the success of the Premier League (which lies in its top-to-bottom competitiveness) could only be maintained by ditching any competition outside of who wins the thing. It’s the equivalent of Terry Leahy advocating Tesco stop pushing the food element so much.
Turning now to the hub of Stan’s argument:
And there would be no promotion or relegation which would allow those teams to grow.
No it would not. After all, with no threat of relegation, why should any chairman or team outside the top three make any effort to win the league, or even to improve? Why should fans care or go anymore? If a team is 10 points clear at the top by November, what interest is there for the rest of the season?
It would make a pleasant change from watching some of the smaller clubs in the Premier League in recent times like Reading, Wigan and Bolton.
Perhaps. So why write in the same column, “So there is very much a place for Stoke City in the top-flight and I have enormous respect for their wily manager Pulis.” Having never won a league or FA Cup, it seems unlikely Stoke would be there as one of the, “biggest and most successful sides in modern history.”
Fans around the world want to see the huge games - not clashes involving clubs like Barnsley, Watford or Hull.
A bit like arguing, that because the Sun is the biggest selling newspaper, people only want to have that one paper in their newsagents. And that we should close down the Mirror. Hang on a sec actually…
The Football League would still function if you are a Wigan or a Notts County or a smaller club.
Well Notts County, as the oldest club in the country, would probably stake a claim to being one of the clubs who have ”contributed the most over the last 100 years.”
In addition, the point is untrue. The only thing that keeps all four divisions going, is the hope for even the smallest teams, that one day, they may mix it with the big boys. Stymie that hope, and there is nothing left. Fact.
There is little precedent in other sports for the system of meritocracy if you look at the NFL.
Ah, the NFL. Well Stan, take a look at the global tv audience for Liverpool vs Manchester United yesterday, and compare that to the American Football at Wembley. The Premier League wins by a distance - so we shall take no lessons from the NFL thanks.
No further questions your honour. And Stan, we’ll still never forget that goal against Atletico Madrid. Even after all this.
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6 responses so far
1 krug // Oct 26, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Stanley Victor Collymore I hope you are reading this. You were a knob at forest and you have just proved that nothing much has changed. Thank you for your uninciteful and unintelligent opinion but in future please keep it to yourself….
2 andy mac // Oct 26, 2009 at 4:13 pm
What on god’s earth could have crossed Collymore’s mind before he wrote such utter nonsense in his Mirror column. What a joke! My guess is he’d been ‘parking the car’ the night before instead of thinking of material for his column.
3 Joey // Oct 26, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Jerk. I’m here in the States arguing to add the promotion/relegation aspect to as many sports as possible. There’s nothing more miserable than watching the Kansas City Royals vs. the Cleveland Indians at the end of the year when there’s no consequences for sucking. Hell, in basketball, teams are rewarded for tanking with higher draft picks.
4 Lorelei // Oct 26, 2009 at 5:26 pm
He’s right!
5 Cece // Oct 27, 2009 at 12:11 am
The American system isn’t really comparable because the leagues are way more competitive, the competition inexorably being a result of the grandeur of the leagues in the first place. You also can’t consider the no relegation aspect without considering the draft (which gives the most successful teams the lowest picks) and salary caps (yes, Manchester City, I just said salary cap) and various other regulations that don’t exist outside North American leagues.
Joey, I couldn’t disagree with you more. The Phillies are not only the oldest MLB franchise, they were the first to reach 10,000 losses after enduring terrible dry spells. And where are they now? On their way to their second consecutive World Series.
Another thing that makes the comparison unfair, is that association football is vastly more popular than other regular seasons sports in England. Many English cities have multiple prestigious football clubs. Only New York and Los Angeles have multiple franchises from the same league (and most them are located in the suburbs, like North Jersey or Orange County, etc,) American cities’ sports passions (and finances) divided between American football, basketball, baseball and hockey. If American leagues relegate, they lose out on an entire metropolitan market.
In other words, using an American model to solve issues in the Premier League is illogical and vice versa.
6 Tone // Oct 28, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Collymore writes things to garner a response from people. The more people take exception to his shit talking, the more hits his page on the Mirror gets and that’s him doing his job.
The more he get’s ignored, the less we’ll see from him.
As we all know, he routinely speaks out of his arse but even he isn’t that stupid, surely?