Finals systems and salary caps are head and shoulders superior to the backwards EPL. The Premier League and soccer is a sport that never evolved because it's never needed to. Why make something better when its the worlds most popular sport even though it's shit and boring?
The irony being that most soccer neanderthals bag other sports and countries that don't play soccer for using a finals system. Saying it's not fair and is shit..... then turn around and boast about Fifa World Cup being the most watched event in the world.... ironically the World Cup uses pools and a finals system similar to say the NFL. Even though soccer fans hate Yanks ey.
f**k the f**king Premier League. Waste competition. Might aswell be a 3 team comp.
i dont watch much soccer unless it's an international competition, but i need to correct you on a couple of things.
the one stage double round-robin system is not just an EPL system. It is the league system in most of the major soccer leagues in europe. it's not backwards. it's just one type of model and how the system operates. for it to work, every team needs to play each other the same number of times with an equal home & away advantage. it rewards consistency right through the season and as such, every game is important.
they have other tournaments that utilise the playoff system right through the competition - such as Cup comps - which enables the best team on the day to win and advance.
the reasoning that the NRL or AFL system is unfair is because theyve essentially just poorly evolved from the european league system. in the case of the NRL, the regular season is run on virtually the same premise. It has a 6 month-long 24 games per club round robin tournament which abruptly ends 6 games per club short of a full double round robin, essentially meaning a team will play 9 teams twice and 6 only once. yet, all teams are compared to each other in a single table for qualification to finals purposes. now apart from the financial benefits of more finals, this perception of inequity in the schedule is another reason for promoting half the comp into the finals. but whats the freakin point of scheduling 6 months of qualifying football to determine the deserving finals teams that essentially means squat when half the comp qualifies and a stellar 4 week run ultimately decides the premiership? yes, obviously its all financial, but competition-wise, it's a bit of a joke and the argument is average teams are still qualifying for finals after a long qualifying period and season-long inconsistent teams are having the chance to usurp the consistently good ones on one day. this is bullshit.
if the NRL are going to persist with a finals system to determine the premiers - which it obvioulsy will, it needs to devise and implement a regular season system which determines the good teams more effectively and fairly and so promotes less of them into the finals. instead, everything is catered for financial incentive & product for News Ltd.
the NFL have it right with a short qualifying season to determine post season participants as well as promoting less than half of teams to their finals - 12 of 32. in the case of the MLB (baseball), they have a much longer qualifying season but only promote a quarter of teams - 8 of 30. this may seem few, but after clubs play 162 games to determine those that deserve it, it is right that a select few advance. if they promote more, then what's the point of the 162 games per team to determine how good they are?
and re salary caps in soccer, etc. that is extremely difficult to implement competition-wise because there are several other competitions that might not implement it. If the English FA or premier league do it, their top players will then go to Spain, or Italy and greatly devalue their own league. it also has repercussions on the promotion/relegation system as caps in different divisions will also be different. the whole premise of european league systems is that the local park team can one-day find their way into the major league. what about the financial incentives on offer for winning competitions, and the excess money some clubs will end up sitting on if they cant spend it on players. this is hardly the case in rugby league with only two major leagues in the world on different sides of the globe, and relatively, deals in peanuts.
