Gorilla Man Where are you?
I thought you’d be on here having a snigger seeing as how Naaaaaaridge got stuffed and look like going down
I have a theory that Ipswich players played out of their skins against Cardiff last Saturday in order to attract bids from other clubs and thus free them of Roy’s baleful influence.
Burton Albion are promoted to the Football League. I wonder if any club has ever won any championship anywhere despite losing 8 of their last 13 games.
Not sure if I qualify in discussing football, being a Brighton fan 
but we only need one point to consign Carlisle to the drop and look forward to some mighty south coast derbies with the Saints.
Whether we will actually do it I don’t know, but we have been here before. Hereford v Brighton a few years back was pretty good. Plus we seem to have developed the art of a draw to, er, a fine art lately.
I am that rare sort in that I don’t dislike other teams generally, I actually like seeing Palace do well 'cos I like Neil Warnock. And what happened to Southampton (the team) was awful, These idiots “running” most clubs deserve severe pain. If they hold things together, I predict they’ll do a Leicester and only lose two games next season… Arf!
Lastly, I must say (as with Bournemouth) Rotherham did an amazing job this season, if they hadn’t lost the points they would be in the playoffs. Inspirational. Well done.
Join the club.
I was in Blackpool for the last game we played against Brighton in March, 2007. It was an unedifying 0-0 event, distinguished only by the fact that we dropped a mere two home points rather than the usual three.
Your task against Stockport seems easier on paper than does Carlisle’s against Millwall. Unfortunately, football is played on grass (:)) so good luck and beware of the slim goal difference.
Well, the playoffs are underway already. Good luck to those teams involved!!! 
With neither Swansea or Blackpool in any danger of going up or down Sunday will not quite be as nerve wracking as some other recent seasons for the Swans.
Automatic promotion from the championship can still be won by Birmingham, Reading or Sheffield U. If Brum lose to Reading, Sheff.U can pip them both to get the second spot.if they can win against Crystal Palace.
Still, in a year’s time whoever it is they will probably be prime candidates to come straight back down again.
At the bottom whatever happens Sunday all three teams relegated will be ex premiership sides.
League One: Northampton Town look to be going down thanks to Carlisle managing to beat Millwall, thus giving them the vital extra point needed. Meanwhile, Scunthorpe appear to be holding off Tranmere with an 88th minute goal, and thus headed to the playoffs.
I think it’s a good thing that American sports don’t have relegation battles; I’d be in agony over such things!
Well I thought Rochdale were going to make the auto promo spot, I was wrong.
They did make the play-offs and face Gillingham in the semi-finals.
DSY: Why don’t American sports have the promo/relegation battles?
You honestly have no idea of the anguish that fans go through when their team is fighting for one and against the other.
I know what it’s like, I’ve been there on more than one occasion
I think I enjoy the end-of-season relegation dogfights more than the contest for the league title. At the top of the table it’s usually settled long before the end of the season, with rare exceptions such as Arsenal’s last-second championship in 1989. But down at the bottom of the Premier League and the lower leagues, it’s breathlessly exciting every year. There are enough clubs involved that it always seems to go down to the wire for at least one of them.
The main reason we don’t have promotion/relegation fights is that none of our leagues is governed by an overall authority similar to the Football Association. Thus, for example, the National Football League is an entity in and of itself; to my knowledge there is no national football governing body at all. And unlike the rest of the world, where sports is done by local clubs, here the members of a league are franchised owners of that league. So the Detroit Lions (to pick on a particularly hapless team of the latest NFL season) cannot be relegated because they are a franchise of the NFL; their owner is in essence an owner of a piece of the NFL. The same thing is true in all other sports we have.
The closest thing we have to the European football model is the set-up for baseball. Major League Baseball is an amalgamation of two leagues: the American League and the National League. As originally set-up in the late 1800s, these bore striking similarity to something like the Premier League. And there are “minor” leagues, which are stratified. However, early on, the major league clubs created a set-up where the minor league clubs have deals with the major league clubs to be used as their developmental system. It’s like if Manchester United had an agreement with one Championship club, one League One club, one League Two club, etc., where the players owned by Man U. were sent to the lowest level of these clubs, and slowly progressed upward by ability, until they were ready to play for Man. U. itself. With such a system, even among the minor leagues, you can’t have upward and downward mobility because then you’d have to rearrange the arrangements all the time.
There is more to it, of course, but the main thrust is: we don’t have sports clubs, we have sports franchises, which means teams are part and parcel to the league, in a way much more interlocked than the members of the Premier League are. It’s sad, too, because watching a 3-12 team take on a 4 - 11 team on the last weekend of the NFL season is just pathetic, since they have NOTHING to play for, not even the chance of getting into the playoffs. With relegation, that sort of game has much more meaning.
So what you’re saying is that no matter how piss poor a team is they still stay in the league no matter the results of their games over the season.
The following season same applies, and the next, and the next …
Their supporters must get mightily cheesed off
Seems a pretty shabby state of affairs IMO
Hehehe, um, talk to one of our Detroit Lions fans about that (they went 0 - 16 this last season). gonzomax, where are you?
Keep in mind that most teams don’t stay bad long, given that teams draft the right to negotiate contracts with players, and in the draft, the worst teams get to go first, thus picking the better prospects. Of course, in the long run, free-agency will allow teams with more money to obtain better quality players (Yankees, for example, much like Man. U.). But think what would happen if the Baggies, instead of being shoved back down a notch were allowed to draft onto their team the best 22-year-old footballer in England. If you make astute picks, you tend to recover from bad years and get up into the middle of the pack.
Still, teams like the Kansas City Royals (baseball), Cincinnati Bengals (American football), etc. do manage to occur, that is, repeatedly bad, for years at a time. And yes, they should be relegated, stuffed into the outer Hells that they are emulating, if for no other reason than the relief of their fans from having to try and support them through less than mediocrity.
Well, with only the Championship to go, here are the relegation results so far:
Conference Relegated: Lewes, Weymouth, Northwich Victoria, Woking. Lewes back down at first try, the others had been up for at least a season.
League Two Relegated: Chester City, Luton Town. Luton Town, of course, are in financial freefall. When they will stop on the plummet is anyone’s guess.
League One Relegated: Hereford United, Cheltenham Town, Crewe Alexandria, Northampton Town. Hereford United go back down on first try.
Championship: Charlton Athletic, Southampton (even without a deduction). Still to be decided today: can Norwich City scrape a win against a Barnsley loss? Norwich are against already relegated Charlton, so of course Charlton have put 2 up on the board!* Barnsley one down to Plymouth Argyle as it stands; so no telling how it all will turn out!
- I have this vision of a drowning man grabbing the leg of someone about to climb into a lifeboat and saying, “Hell no, you’re going down with me!!!”
You forgot to mention that Luton did in fact win the Johmsons Paint Trophy at Wembley…well whoop de do
Imagine the grief suffered by Cardiff fans. Having been in an auto promo spot for most of the season they lose out on the last day of even a play-off place…by ONE goal !!.
When all is said and done the last matches of the Championship produced some not unexpected results.
Naaaaridge didn’t manage to escape the drop and no doubt Gorrilla Man** will be rejoicing.
As an aside: Karen Brady of Birmingham City is one fine buxom wench and can expect a certain amount of appreciation from fans of other clubs in the premiership
The pivotal result here was surely Preston 6 Cardiff 0 on 18 April.
If Cardiff had successfully defended a 5-0 losing position at Deepdale, they would be in the playoffs rather than Preston!
Anyway, contributors to this thread have quite a few SD derbies in prospect for next season, with Swansea, Ipswich, Bristol City, Crystal Palace, Blackpool, Leicester and Peterborough all fighting it out in the second division. The third division will feature Brighton, Southampton, Oldham and possibly Rochdale.
Bring it on, as they say.
Up the dale!!!
Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t Cardiff miss a penalty in the game against Preston?.
Up the Dale
Yes they did :):)
Well the football is finished for Swansea but it’s time to think about our squad for next season.
We’d like to keep at least one of our loan players, Jordi Gomez, who played well enough to make the championship team of the season, also Jason Scotland who has one more year on his contract but who’s agent has been touting Scotland around.
I’m pretty satisfied with our efforts this season but I certainly hope we can improve even more next season. Apart from some bad injuries to key players what really sunk us was the 20 drawn games we had.
Gawd blimey, lumme, luvaduck etc etc. After all that gnashing and a-wailing we end up in comparatively respectable 16th place. Those extra places will really boost the club financially next season… <snicker>
Welcome to the saints, and Charlton and Norwich to the wunnerful world of league 1. The games between us will surely demonstrate just how ready BAHAFC are for premiership and european footie in a couple of seasons. Won’t it? Am I missing something here? braincells perhaps?
Can we please have a thread like this next season? It’s fun having a natter about this minus rabid hysterical ravings Cheers
Well I’m off to Rochdale tonight to watch the mighty Dale take on Gillingham in the first leg of the Div 2 play-off SFs.
Up the Dale