Enjoy the decade of West Ham domination.
In the short term it will be nice for likes of us, West Ham, Everton, Leicester and perhaps even Leeds if they keep building to actually fight for league title, will have a proper 80s feel when yes Liverpool did dominate the league but you still had us and Everton winning it and many promoted teams like Ipswich, West Ham and Watford could all finish 2nd or 3rd so no real closed shop in those days as now.
Yes I know it will feel like league cup but ironically that's still a competition the top teams still regularly win despite limited interest in it.
Not naive to think though in long run the finances will really dry up. I think this is what has sparked this as Sky have reached the limit as to what they can pay for domestic rights and really the big prem money now comes from the overseas rights so the top 6 have exploited that knowing the interest they can get from this joke proposal from Asia and America.
I too can remember first talk of this in the late 90s but Uefa just about managed to keep clubs in line with tweaking the CL a bit.
I hate this idea like everyone else. It's true the CL format for group stage level is pretty boring nowadays bar the odd shock elimination. In an ideal world it would just be straight two leg knock out from the start as that's where the main excitement comes form but you can see from main Uefa proposals for restructure that is opposite of what they want aswell by adding more group stage games.
What might've worked imo instead is a top league of 10 teams so top 5 in prem (feck Spurs
) plus top two in Spain and Italy plus Bayern/PSG. Then a second europa league style with another prem team plus one more from the other main leagues and then likes of Ajax, Porto and you have 2/3 promotion relegation places so at least you have a bit of change in the teams every season but it still excludes a minnow like say APOL Nicosia who I can remember reaching CL QF about a decade ago plus still kills a team like Atalanta developing through brilliant player development as they've done in last 5 years.
I've always said to friends in the past I'd be done following football if they ever did away with relegation. Meant that more for domestic leagues in becoming closed shops so I simply won't watch a minute of this competition.
Think the big hope here is the big players just rebel against it, hopefully what Havertz said is true and that's the feeling in Chelsea dressing room. It's actually an interesting thought now, we've seen the debate about Harry Kane in last few weeks about him needing to move on to win stuff.
Effectively vast majority of players will just be signing up to be Harry Kanes in that there won't be domestic cups to win anymore (which a big club can always win to paper over the cracks of an average season as we've seen many times in last 20 years).
You see the passion that Bruno Fernandes speaks of wanting to win the league for Man. United and other trophies so for all that to be taken away just to finish 5th or 6th in this new league....I dunno but it's a lot to lose. No more days out at Wembley etc and final wins that stay long in the memory. Clubs like Man. United and Arsenal potentially now could go 20-30 years without winning anything now so join the club of most of us in English football who never win anything anymore.
As it happens I don't think these clubs will be banned from domestic leagues anyway and they'll have to find a way to make it work with the schedule but FA cup pretty much going to be an opt out now unless B teams are fielded so final nail for that competition although again will mean winners of those who haven't won a pot since dinosaurs roamed the earth.
All in all, I think things will be scaled down over next few months and compromises will be reached but football won't be the same again, I'm pretty sure this talk started this time last year so shows the intentions of clubs as soon as the pandemic hit 12 months ago.