This message is a query to English soccer fans: Do you thrill to a match between Manchester City and Sheffield United? How about West Brom-Fulham? Are you mad to see the Tweety Birds and 'Arry the Elk ‘Ornet back in the Premier League next season?
Yank here, so disregard. I don't, I don't, and I am not. Your beloved four tier structure and promotion/relegation regime is tediously absurd. You defend it as a pure meritocracy and as a canvas for dreams. It is not a meaningful meritocracy to have West Brom and Fulham promoted this season and already relegated for next season. To have Norwich and Watford relegated last season and promoted for next. That's not a meritocracy, that's mediocrity. In a meritocracy a club promoted proves it is deserving by staying up a season or three. You see merit in the one-trick pony; I see a one-trick pony. You see the yo-yo as meritocratic. I see a silly toy.
"Every player and every fan of a club in a lower division can dream--Huddlesfield Town against Liverpool!" You have that dream in the FA Cup. You have it again in the League Cup. Why must you have it in a round-robin league, too? League play is where dreams turn to nightmares, yours and mine, where meritocracy becomes survival-of-the-fittest cruelty. The three teams to be relegated after this boring season mercifully concludes have won 5, 5, and 5 matches out of thirty-five played. That's a combined fifteen wins in 105 matches. Your dream life is death from boredom. Yank advice, so disregard: take care that your fantasy life does not come to dominate your reality.
Could we compromise? Of course not, "Tradition!" Twenty clubs is too many. How about tiers of sixteen teams per playing home and away? This season that compromise would lop off Brighton, Fulham, West Brom and SheffU. Not much improvement in that compromise from where I sit across the pond from you but when it is necessary to improve any improvement is necessary. Or, keep the PL at twenty but replace the annual yo-yo's with three-year average yo-yo's. No? Alright then. I love your league, I love City, so disregard this message in a bottle and carry on.
