What is your take on...?

[Dellas]

What do you guys think about play offs, goal difference, goals scored etc..?

I mean I was just thinking about the 3 teams that will get relegated from the EPL, and how the ones that will replace won't be the top 3 from the championship. The top 2 from the championship automatically get promoted while the next 4 take part in play offs and the winner gets promoted. Is it really fair tho? For example the fifth team in the Championship could be 10 points behind 3rd place yet they still have a chance of being promoted...I had an idea, and I'm sure other people have had this idea, but what do you guys think about the 3rd team that is in league B playing the 18th team in League A so as to see whether they would be able to make it in League A, instead of having another team like e.g Derby in the EPL this season, basically where they come up and then go straight back down without putting up much of a fight.

At the other end of the table tho, do you guys think that goal difference is the way to go about settling a title if the top 2 teams are joint on points or should the league base the title on head to heads. I'm not sure of what they do if this happens in Italy or Portugal but I think that both ideas are not great. I think that if you have 2 teams are joint on points at the end of the season I think a play off between these 2 teams would be the best solution. I mean it is like head to head but it gives the chance for teams to properly perform in these 2 very important games.

what do you guys think?

[kyan]

I think the play-offs for the Championship is a great idea. Otherwise in a league of 24 teams you'd have barely anything to play for.

For example in the Premiership you have 4 Champions league spots, and anything from 1-3 UEFA Cup spots to aim for. So there's almost always something to play for for a large part of the season.

If you eliminate the play-offs, less than half-way through the league half the teams probably won't have much to play for. A few will be battling relegation and 5 or 6 might be battling for 3 automatic promotion spots. But what about the other 10-15 teams? Get rid of the competitive nature.

OK so Derby were shit, but they fluked it in the play-off final anyway. Scored with one of their only attacks while WBA couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banjo that day.

I don't like the idea of the 18th placed team in League A playing the 3 placed team in League B. What about summer signings? A team has the whole of the summer to try and get themselves ready to step up, sometimes they can (like West Ham did in their first season back in the league 3 years ago, making it to the FA Cup final and a top half finish) and sometimes they can't (like Derby). But they have the opportunity.

Football isn't just for the elite. The chance has to be there for weaker teams to get into a higher league so they can get money, so that they can develop. I'm sure Derby will be in a stronger position in seasons to come despite their humiliation this season simply because of teh amount of money they'd have got from playing a season in the Premiership, and playing teams like Manchester United and Chelsea...

And goal difference I think is a good idea for a title or relegation bout. It might not be the fairest method, but I think it's the best - much like penalties. GD in essence should encourage a team to try and score as many goals as possible while conceding as few as possible. So if you scrape 1-0 wins for a season, it could be telling come the end of it. It may be somewhat hypocritical considering what I said about the Championship play-offs earlier, but to decide an actual league title I don't think it's right. It turns the league into a cup, not what it's supposed to be...

[D-Kin]

It's interesting as different countries have different takes on it. In Serie B the system is the same as in England - top two go up automatically, then 3rd-6th go through the playoffs etc. However, if the third placed team is 10 or more points ahead of the fourth placed team then that team goes up automatically as well, so there are no playoffs. I think it's a decent rule anyway.