The context is fans anger at what the money-grabbing ESL stands for & is trying to achieve, when the money-grabbing PL did the same thing by essentially braking away from the Football League 30 years ago. I don't recall such a massive outcry???? Why?
There
was a massive outcry!
The initial attempt by the 5 (United Liverpool Spurs Arsenal and Everton) was to set up a rebranded Division One with 75% of the TV deal to be shared between themselves and the other 25% between the other 17 teams (there were 22 teams in Division One then).
That didn’t happen in the end because there was so much pressure put on them they folded on it.
In the end Division One was rebranded, still under The FA (don’t forget the FA existed before the Football League did), as the Premier League where nothing at all change other than the governance not coming from the Football League.
The main reason for the rebranding was because the FA and the clubs wanted to distance themselves from decades of hooliganism where English football was seen in a negative light across the world, crowds had dwindled, and the standard of football was utterly dreadful.
Meritocracy was still there just as it had been since 1888. Teams could get promoted on merit and not chosen by a group of teams who could say “Nah we don’t care that Ipswich have won the Second Division, we don’t fancy them getting into the Premier League, Derby are a bigger club with more potential and they only finished 6 points behind Ipswich so what’s the difference? they’re coming up instead. And while we’re at it, let’s not relegate all three teams, West Ham can stay up so we’ll keep Boro down as well”.
No, instead teams were promoted and relegated as it had always been - apart from Arsenal and Spurs in 1919:
——Division One was expanding to 22 teams in 1919-20 and all 20 clubs in Div1 from 1914-15 (the Great War interrupted the years from 1915-1919) were told they were going to stay up that season, so no relegation, and they would just be joined by the Top2 from Div2. However, Arsenal who finished 5th in Div2 ended up getting promoted as well, and Spurs were relegated to make way for them!——
The ESL was a scandalous attempt at a bailout for the clubs in biggest debt who were so insecure about their grip on power and success that they tried to ruin the fabric of domestic football just to get JP Morgan to bail them out. That was the entire point to this ESL. Not football, not enhancing football, nor taking football forward... just to pay off debts and give a small number of insecure clubs some power and money.
This group of clubs decided that they’d always remain in this league no matter what, they could never not qualify for it. They could head down to League 1 and just use domestic football to field EDS teams and not worry about a thing because they’d always be in the ESL. Everton could build and move to their new stadium, win the Premier League title and the ESL clubs could say “Nah we don’t care that Everton have won the Premier League, we don’t fancy them getting into the ESL, Red Bull have said they’ll invest a bit of money into the ESL so we’re going to let Salzburg in instead. And while we’re at it, let’s not let Benfica back next season despite doing really well in the ESL in their last few invites, they’re not bringing enough money in so Porto can come in instead and Benfica can sod off for a bit.”
Why City tagged along with these shysters is a mystery. We didn’t need to at all. We could and should have stuck two fingers up at their invite and laughed at them from the sidelines and made ourselves the bastions of morality in English football.
The biggest missed opportunity we’ve ever had!
