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| Add Scotland, Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland tot he English Premier League |
AS I look at the League of Ireland for the last 6 years i take a big breath and sigh. The League is stuck in neutral. Sky sports powerful marketing influence invades every home of England, Scotland, Ireland and our cousins in Northern Ireland. My wish here is to have the game grow in Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Wales.
The problem is the marketing, the talent and the interest in the English Premier League. The other league suffer tremendously because of the proximity and the interlocking economy and similarities of the islands.
The League of Ireland, Scottish Premier League, Wales Premier League and Northern Irish Premier League suffer.
Scotland attendance in 2014 was only 8,865.
Rep of Ireland in 2014 was a 1,559
Northern Ireland was only 887
Wales in hovering on extinction at 325
Well here is my suggestion. If you can't beat them join them. Wales has Swansea City playing in the Premier League. Swansea averages 20,407 in the 2013-14 season. Liberty Stadium only holds 20,827 so you could say they were close to a sell out almost every game.
Now Lets Say Rangers and Celtic also competed in the Premier League. They already have the attendance and the stadiums.
There has been talk of this already. Maybe another club could win the Scottish Title.
Now here is the big move. Lets say we get someone to start Dublin United to play in Aviva Stadium. I would say the stadium of 50,000 would be close to capacity the first year. The FAI needs games in the stadium to pay of the debt of building it. Extra money could be filtered down to the league to make the League of Ireland grow. If this works there could English Premier game in the aviva Stadium every weekend. Ireland could double it's profits by adding Dublin City F.C or a second club to compete in the top league.
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| Aviva Stadium sits empty while there is a great demand for it. |
Northern Ireland could add Belfast Uniter to play in the newly remodeled Windsor Park.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor_Park
The whole idea of adding clubs to play in the English Premier league is because all these leagues can not grow because of the English Premier League. The EPL is just to big, and powerful for these particular league to compete against.
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ReplyDeleteThis is nonsense.
ReplyDelete1. The reason Wales puts their best clubs in England is because its a principality with close political links to England. Clubs like Cardiff and Swansea have only had success recently, mostly they struggled playing in England. Swansea were down the lower leagues and nearly went out of business about 5 or so years ago.
2. Why would England accept clubs from a country (Rep.Ireland) that has no political ties to it?
3. The Aviva taking in 50,000 for match days? So people that have followed Liverpool, Man Utd etc for generations are just going to jump ship to a newly founded Dublin club.
4. It has been tried, MK dons tried to move to Dublin and become the Dublin Dons but there was no interest in it.
5. Celtic and Rangers have been/would be blocked by SFA and UEFA from joining a "foreign league". The SFA know that it would be the end of their domestic league. UEFA would block it because of the precedence it would set as if they did it what's to stop Ajax, PSG, Porto etc. wanting to join bigger neighbouring domestic leagues.
6. Even if Celtic, Rangers and Newly founded Irish clubs went to England theres no guarantee they would compete in the premier league inside the next 10 years, its more than likely they wouldn't, not without a billionaire sugar daddy anyway. They would have to start at the bottom. Probably conference or league 2. Theres lots of clubs in England just as big as Rangers and Celtic that aren't within an asses roar of champions league/league titles. Newcastle Utd (53.000 seats), Leeds (40,000 seats), Sunderland (48,000), Sheffield Wednesday (40,000 seats) etc etc.
The point you made about England having a negative effect on Ireland (north and south), Wales and Scotland's domestic leagues is true but you can throw in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, etc. etc. into that list and they all have flourishing leagues despite the same problems as Ireland with their people following English teams and flocking to watch them play. They have just got their acts together and found ways to live with it and prosper despite it. We should be learning from leagues like that and not looking at England. When it comes to a country with 4.5 million people why are we looking at a league that has 60 million people and a global audience. Fixing up stadium and sorting out the league structure should be the priority. Northern Ireland have been working hard and doing the right things to improve their league and their attendances have been increasing in the last few years. On average up 70 people a game this year on last. Mightn't seem like much but its an extra £13,000 per club over a season. If the FAI handed every LOI club E15,000 (£13,000) this year, they'd all be lobbing the pope to have John Delaney canonised.