EastStandBlue
Life President
Another season in the Premier League graveyard grinds to a halt and Chris Coleman departs Coventry, charged with the heinous crime of failing to take them aboard the Barclays gravy train. Who’d be a manager in the Championship, eh?
Such is the stature of the second tier of English football in this day and age that 15 of the 24 teams are so-called Premiership rejects, and of those nine who haven’t been “fortunate” enough to be relentlessly tonked week in, week out, five of them sit in the bottom half.
It’s been almost a decade since Coventry were relegated from the Premiership and, in that time frame, the club have relocated from Highfield Road to the impressive Ricoh Arena, avoided relegation to League One on two separate occasions and, what is fast becoming an archetypal trait of a former Premiership club, flirted with financial oblivion and administration. In fact, they came just 20 minutes within aforementioned oblivion; Ray Ranson seemingly riding in on an elephant to save the club.
A 19th place finish, an eventual seven point grace from a jaunt into League One, was deemed not good enough and Coleman was handed his marching orders yesterday and became the ninth manager to leave his post in the Championship this season. Ok, QPR and Peterborough account for half of that list by themselves, but you get the picture...
It’s an indictment of what has become all that is wrong with football, a money-fuelled rampage on the quest for success, which will ultimately result in more money, sought by those only interested in lining their pockets with the fruits of Premier League revenue streams and commercial opportunities.
Future prospects aren’t exactly bright, either. With the Premier League keen to increase and extend parachute payments for relegated teams, it will only distort the Championship further and effectively create a glass ceiling for clubs who strive to better themselves. How can a club of Scunthorpe’s stature, who have valiantly staved off relegation this season, compete with a handful of clubs who earn £12m a year for four years because they were deemed not good enough for the Premiership?
The Premier League already has the elitist feel of an Old Men’s Club; You can try it for a year, but we’ll make you feel as unwelcome as possible and, with any luck, send you packing at the first attempt because we don’t like that Reading riff-raff here, nor that Blackpool side who have the commercial appeal of a Baghdad suburb. The Championship is quickly falling to the same snobbery.
Coleman’s sacking was relatively low key because of their disastrous finish to the season and the fans will, more than likely, be appeased with the appointment of Coventry legend Gary McAllister as manager... Someone deemed not good enough for Leeds in League One. As low key as his departure was, it’s a telling sign of things to come for Europe’s fifth most popular football league.
Such is the stature of the second tier of English football in this day and age that 15 of the 24 teams are so-called Premiership rejects, and of those nine who haven’t been “fortunate” enough to be relentlessly tonked week in, week out, five of them sit in the bottom half.
It’s been almost a decade since Coventry were relegated from the Premiership and, in that time frame, the club have relocated from Highfield Road to the impressive Ricoh Arena, avoided relegation to League One on two separate occasions and, what is fast becoming an archetypal trait of a former Premiership club, flirted with financial oblivion and administration. In fact, they came just 20 minutes within aforementioned oblivion; Ray Ranson seemingly riding in on an elephant to save the club.
A 19th place finish, an eventual seven point grace from a jaunt into League One, was deemed not good enough and Coleman was handed his marching orders yesterday and became the ninth manager to leave his post in the Championship this season. Ok, QPR and Peterborough account for half of that list by themselves, but you get the picture...
It’s an indictment of what has become all that is wrong with football, a money-fuelled rampage on the quest for success, which will ultimately result in more money, sought by those only interested in lining their pockets with the fruits of Premier League revenue streams and commercial opportunities.
Future prospects aren’t exactly bright, either. With the Premier League keen to increase and extend parachute payments for relegated teams, it will only distort the Championship further and effectively create a glass ceiling for clubs who strive to better themselves. How can a club of Scunthorpe’s stature, who have valiantly staved off relegation this season, compete with a handful of clubs who earn £12m a year for four years because they were deemed not good enough for the Premiership?
The Premier League already has the elitist feel of an Old Men’s Club; You can try it for a year, but we’ll make you feel as unwelcome as possible and, with any luck, send you packing at the first attempt because we don’t like that Reading riff-raff here, nor that Blackpool side who have the commercial appeal of a Baghdad suburb. The Championship is quickly falling to the same snobbery.
Coleman’s sacking was relatively low key because of their disastrous finish to the season and the fans will, more than likely, be appeased with the appointment of Coventry legend Gary McAllister as manager... Someone deemed not good enough for Leeds in League One. As low key as his departure was, it’s a telling sign of things to come for Europe’s fifth most popular football league.
