The new ‘Two teams per capital’ rule

Must be on the wrong page.

Apologies.

Also Liverpool are the second team from Liverpool to be called Liverpool, so we may have gone the way of the first, or even worse, gone the way of the second.

Manchester, and Liverpool to a lesser extent, can offer everything London can nowadays, except maybe the theatre scene - and that is not really a draw for P.L. footballers.

When posters were saying Fulham were sold because of their location, I would only partly agree.

The biggest club in the world are located in the shittiest, grimiest part of the North-West. Has anyone been to Salford, and walked around the terraced streets?

Again, Liverpool have a huge worldwide appeal, hence the massive commercial deals.

I would make the point that London clubs are at saturation point as far as attendances are concerned. Whereas we could easily add another 10,000 with a new ground and a little success.

In addition, Athens will have 5 (five!!) teams on the highest level next year, not just two like you said.

Seriously though, London is big enough to sustain those clubs, especially if they make PL. I don't know what is the most clubs it has had in the top flight or the fewest. The North-West has had an excellent record of the number of clubs in the the top division and our city has never been without top flight football at any time since it began.

Cast your mind back to 1983-84. To add to the general depression in the North the Old Div 1 contained 8 Southern Teams - Arsenal, Spurs, QPR, West Ham, Southampton, Watford, Luton, Ipswich; 10 Midlands teams - Villa, WBA, Birmingham, Wolves, Norwich, Forest, Coventry, Stoke, Leicester, Notts Co and only 4 Northern teams - Everton, Liverpool, Man Utd & Sunderland!

No Leeds, no Sheffield, no Newcastle, no Man City, no Wigan, Blackburn etc.

It was grim up North that year although all the silverware went to Merseyside!

Erik - you're right about Anderlecht. I don't know how I missed that! However, this site - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_football_clubs_in_Greece - does state that there are two Athens teams (Panathinaikos and Apollon Smyrni) in the 'Superleague' for the forthcoming season.

Oh, and I meant to include the Swedish premier league, by the way. They have two Stockholm teams in the 'Allsvenskan'. Unless a passing Swede can tell me otherwise!

Having said that, it's interesting that of the original 12 members of the football league, none were from the South - they were from the North and Midlands.

Incidenatally, I don't agree with Kev's assessment that it was all about money back then as it is now. Man Utd and Spurs were relegated in the 70's whilst teams like Watford, Luton, Notts Co and Swansea came up and hung around for a good few years in the 80's on meagre crowds most of the time.

I want to talk about this as at least its a different and interesting article, but its hard to know how serious you're being. I'll assume you know an actual rule is ridiculous and deal with your assertion that teams from the capital have an unfair advantage.

In as far as foreign players may want to live in the capital city, which is the most cosmopolitan and more likely to have others from their country or who at least speak their language, they would seem to have an advantage. London, and most capital cities are also, as you say awash with money, relatively speaking.

However, imagine if there were only two serious teams in London; so add up the average attendance of all the London clubs and divide them by two: that's how many fans each team would have coming through the gate week in week out. (I haven't bothered working it out, but lets say that's 100,000 for starters). You've now got two 'super-clubs' with whom no-one else can compete. The current splitting of London loyalties, fans, money and journalistic attention between three major clubs and (depending what you count) 7-10 minor ones actually increases competition and enables clubs from the industrial north to be the historically most successful.

If was a fan of any Spanish team other than Barcelona and Real Madrid I think I'd be advocating the opposite, and that Real's membership and fan base should be split among three or four clubs, reducing the size of the behemoth. Indeed lots of the lesser nations have had extremely boring leagues, as the one team from the capital pretty much wins it every year, the most extreme example being that Skonto Riga won the first 14 Latvian championships. New money is changing this in lots of countries, but I think

Now, on the comparisons to other countries: I think the history of each country is such that there's no point making comparisons. The decentralisation of France, the histories of Italy and Germany as separate states and city states and so on. The most telling thing however, is that you simply ignored Moscow, which has at least 5 of the historically biggest clubs in Russia, and all the others tended to be capital clubs from what are now independent countries, such as Kyiv Dinamo.

Just a few other points. West Bromwich Albion play in West Bromwich, not sure what the problem is there geographically. Athens has all three of Greece's biggest clubs, as Piraeus, home of Olimpiacos, seems to be considered to be within Greater Athens. To further defeat your theory, AEK, despite the 'advantage' of being in the capital, were relegated to the 3rd tier of Greek football last year.

All in all, it just seems that you're saying "Tottenham have more money than us and get to sign more players and that's not fair", but we only have to compete with one neighbour in our city, they have to compete with several. Imagine if they signed everyone that Arsenal, West Ham, Fulham etc signed and only Chelsea were their rivals for players who wanted to live in the capital, they'd be out of sight for us wouldn't they?

...and the "but I think..." sentence was just going to say that lots of champion clubs still come from capitals.

Oh, & '... notts Forrest ...'?? - FFS, Colin!

Phil

With this board, I wouldn't be surprised if this club was renamed Bill FC, the stadium named after Bill with a statue next to Dixie's of Moyes and BK arm in arm. Utter clowns all of them.

Genius. Liverpool to me in one breath.

Somehow, I don't see that many in L4

KT 565 - Theatre scene and who is the world renown impresario responsible for that - none other than our very own Billy 'The only True Blue'!!

In the spirit of openness I have to share a story that corroborates one of the key thrusts of your article: the draw and attraction of London.

I have my own business with a key client in Canada, I have know this client many years and have developed a good business relationship. Ordinarily, I will go out to Vancouver to see the client - however in April the client came over to the UK for the first time. As is often the case he brought his wife over and wanted to build a vacation around the business trip. He had few days in London, bit of a tour of England then 3 days in Liverpool, flying back from Manchester.

He stayed at my home throughout his stop in Liverpool. As is always the case he was very positive about the warmth and hospitality of the Liverpool people.

He likes the EPL - no special affinity - just interest. On the last day, business concluded, I took him on a "football tour" - - both grounds. I could sense that there was a degree of reticence in a guy who's normally very outgoing. My curiosity got the better of me and asked him what was up. At first he fobbed me off weith some spurious chat - probed again - his response was prefaced with "James, can I be frank..." - sensing the worst - he just said - (sorry I do not wish to offend - and more importantly I say this as someone who hailed from L4) - this part of Liverpool is just derelict wasteland - he stated that he had never seen so many boarded up and derelict housing/shops. The poverty and urban decline, something that we have got used to I suppose really took him aback.

This got me thinking about attracting businesses, relocating people and attracting footballers to this environment. I came to the conclusion that environment would indeed play a part - particularly if you are foriegn seeing the place for a first time - whilst also in negotiations with a London club.

The pull of London is so strong and the disproportionate nature of it is broadening significantly year on year. Football merely reflects the wider economy in this regard. We are morphing into a pattern that is quite prevalent in continental europe which is to have capital centric wealth. The Olympics, HS2 heralded as UK wide opportunities are only paradoxically going to exacerbate the gulf. Football is as I say a mere example of it.

That London has 6 Premier League teams and Liverpool has 2, then, would seem to suggest that there's actually a disproportionately large number of Premier League teams in Liverpool, not London.

If you are talking about Greater London then you must consider it against Merseyside not Liverpool.

Clubs used to be community clubs not necessarily "City" clubs and a lot of the following has been built up over generations which if you consider Blues are now all over the world with the transigent nature of business and work.

I have no problem who is in the Prem as long as we win it again sometime soon.

London has been used to describe a larger area for hundreds and hundreds of years. Greater London is effectively far-flung suburbs like Enfield, Bromley or Richmond in Middlesex, a county which now only exists as a postal code. Holloway (Arsenal), Tottenham (Er, Tottenham), Newham (West Ham) and South Norwood/Croydon (Palace) are very much in London, as is White City/Hammersmith (QPR)

Confusing hey..

I live in beckenham and was tying to describe all the different congutations of this city to my friends from back home last weekend.

Anything beyond that is the province of the devil.

The original catholic cathedral plans were impressive if you havent seen that. I wonder if Kenwright had a hand in this? I think it would have been the worlds biggest cathedral in the world. I saw a model of it years ago at St George's hall (another great building).

As for London attracting the best talent, because it's 'swinging' London....mmm. For my money if a player chooses location over quality of football his priorities are wrong and he's a tourist rather than an ambitious hungry footballer and is best left alone.

Ultimately, you're right that players should make their choice on purely footballing grounds - but the fact is, many don't and it's something we, as fans, tend to overlook. Of course, plenty do: I remember the ultra-glamorous David Ginola deflecting questions about Newcastle with the comment that he'd chosen the team, not the city.

On reflection, I think Mike Alison (631) is probably right when he says that in Spain they would probably want more teams in the capital, not less, thereby reducing the power of the big two - although, my researches indicated that Madrid already has more teams in the top league than any capital city apart from London. Hats off to him for researching the Latvian league! Contrariwise, hats ON to him for the comment "I'll assume you know an actual rule is ridiculous" which made me laugh for quite a long time. Some people, eh?

I'm a little surprised that no one picked up on the media bias angle, but there you go.

I often say half jokingly that the rest of the country should join the scots and declare independence from the south-east, because London sucks the life blood out of the rest of the country.

As for Madrid, Getafe isn't really in Madrid, its more of a Watford or Reading from what I understand.

As for media bias, until someone shows me hard facts I tend to ignore accusations of media bias. They all tend to be a bit "woe is me" and are totally subject to 'confirmation bias' type psychology where evidence to the contrary is ignored if it doesn't fit the pre-conceived world-view.

I also agree with David to a large extent. With possibly a few exceptions, any player selecting on the basis of location rather than football is one to be avoided.

I fear the same sort of thing may occur when Celtic play their Champions League qualifier against the allegedly Norwegian Elfsborg.

Elfsborg? I ask you!

Have Os Belenenses lost their top flight status in Portugal - a fine Lisbon club with few airs or graces?

Living in the USA, there is a clearly strong relationship between money, market size, the best players, and winning. Every team in every sport in the entire country lives in the shadows of New York and Los Angeles, with Chicago (size), Miami (glamour), and Boston (history, money) being the only cities even remotely close. As a supporter of historically smaller teams, I would absolutely love to see 1-3 more teams in New York and Los Angeles, if only to dilute their markets and level the playing field a little bit. It's simply unfair when the New York Yankees, get to build a 100,000-seat stadium sell shirts, hats, and other logo-stamped gear in a city of 10-15 million, because even if a club hits the same % of fans as a team with a 60,000-seat stadium in a city of 1 million, it has a massive financial advantage.

Thank goodness for West Ham, Crystal Palace, QPR, and every other club that manages to whittle off a handful of fans from Chelsea and Arsenal.

He looked at my shirt, and asked: "Where is Everton?"
"It's a district of Liverpool," I replied.
"Oh, right, like Chelsea?" he mused.

"er, no."

Equally, there are countries that refer to us as Everton Liverpool, just as we say Atletico Madrid.

I don't really consider any of the London teams as 'big' as their support and popularity seems manufactured – particularly Chelsea. There are a number of sleeping giants such as Wolves and Sheffield Wednesday who I would consider bigger in terms of support and history...

However, I would still favour any of these teams over Newcastle... the most hyped and rubbish club in the country.