Six Teams in Playoffs from next season 3rd-8th

[72bus]

Hopefully it will get rid of the dead rubbers towards the end of the season , nothing worse than watching 12th against 13th going through the motions .

[Acton Stations]

Perhaps they should also introduce a Charity Shield match between the team that goes up as Champions and the team who wins the play-off final. Total lunacy: get a grip!!!

[SheepRanger]

The Welsh Premier is slightly different....!

There are only 12 teams in the league, and when everyone has played each other home and away 22 games in, the league splits into two. The championship half for the top 6 and the relegation half for 7-12.

At the end of the season the team at the bottom of the championship mini league, plays the team top of the relegation league, and the winner takes the last UEFA Conference League spot for European football the following season. This is how my home team qualified a few years back and won two qualifying rounds and then lost, but still picked up £500k in prize and TV money. Americans are now investing into Haverfordwest County purely for the Euro prize money, even though they're part-time.

Its all about the money, money, money.......

[Abseits]

Sorry to dredge this old-ish thread up but I saw that Tranmere Rovers were the ONLY club in entire EFL to vote against extending the play-offs to 6 clubs. Every Championship team was in favour with a few abstentions and absentees in the lower divisions. So the club's REALLY wanted it.

[SheepRanger]

Sorry to dredge this old-ish thread up but I saw that Tranmere Rovers were the ONLY club in entire EFL to vote against extending the play-offs to 6 clubs. Every Championship team was in favour with a few abstentions and absentees in the lower divisions. So the club's REALLY wanted it.

It wont be long until its expanded again to incorporate the prem team finishing third from bottom.

Its all about the money money money..........

[Sleeping Giants]

The Welsh Premier is slightly different....!

There are only 12 teams in the league, and when everyone has played each other home and away 22 games in, the league splits into two. The championship half for the top 6 and the relegation half for 7-12.

At the end of the season the team at the bottom of the championship mini league, plays the team top of the relegation league, and the winner takes the last UEFA Conference League spot for European football the following season. This is how my home team qualified a few years back and won two qualifying rounds and then lost, but still picked up £500k in prize and TV money. Americans are now investing into Haverfordwest County purely for the Euro prize money, even though they're part-time.

Its all about the money, money, money.......

That's a ridiculous format, 6th and 7th place out of 12 get a 50/50 shot at European football. Although pretty much half of the EPL qualify for Europe next year so maybe I have no point?

[SheepRanger]

That's a ridiculous format, 6th and 7th place out of 12 get a 50/50 shot at European football. Although pretty much half of the EPL qualify for Europe next year so maybe I have no point?

Maybe ridiculous, but the vast majority of those places go into the preliminary rounds, rather than the first round proper. The teams they play I've never heard of, quite often mid-tabled eastern European teams. I think in the second preliminary round they played a club side from the Faroe Islands!! You also see the Ireland & Northern Ireland teams. Its a good way to share European money down to semi-pro clubs. Its been massive to my home town club. I think the Welsh Premier League is being expanded, so qualification might change. The best players in this league tend to go to Newport County (bottom end of EFL 2).

All English teams would skip these preliminary rounds in the European Conference League.

[Acton Stations]

Sorry to dredge this old-ish thread up but I saw that Tranmere Rovers were the ONLY club in entire EFL to vote against extending the play-offs to 6 clubs. Every Championship team was in favour with a few abstentions and absentees in the lower divisions. So the club's REALLY wanted it.

At first I was inclined to believe that this was an incentive to make the league more competitive in order to tip the balance in favour of a 'quest for league points and promotion' which might have the effect of discouraging individual clubs from attempting to achieve sustainability through methods that would likely cost league points (eg: driving-up the value of younger players through playing time, leaving experienced players out).

However, because of this new information, I'm not sure that this is now the case. In fact, in a real sense this might even encourage clubs to dabble even more in these types of methods, simply because it could be assumed that it is now possible to get promoted with even less points in the bank, allowing for a bit of "player development" dabble room. Is it a way of saying to the clubs "yes, you can be self-sustainable in this way, and still achieve a 'respectable' level of competitiveness?"

Below is an an extract from the speech given by the new Sporting Director of Cesena FC in Italy's Serie B, where the play-offs already involve 6 clubs. I regard this club as a pretty close counterpart to us in some ways. For one thing thay have a 20,000 seater stadium and on the odd occasion they get to Serie A, they end up punching above their weight. The language he uses has a familiar ring to it:

“The goal is to build a solid project and develop our young players, because I believe Cesena has always demonstrated that its youth academy is a real asset, and it has proven that once again this year. The direction we intend to take is to create a project—I repeat—that is solid and sustainable, because I believe soccer is moving toward self-sustainability, though obviously without neglecting sporting results, because we all want to win. In short, what we aim to do is create value by focusing on the young players we have in our youth system and perhaps also on other young players who may join us.”

So, of course, we are by no means alone, but I think it's going to be even harder for Cesena to maintain that balance of success on the pitch because the tie-breaker in Serie B -for teams on the same number of points - is decided by 'head-to-head' results, rather than goal difference.

I fear for next season with this innovation as I think we could be walking a tightrope and there are a lot of wannabees for those top positions out there.

Extract from:

https://cesenafc.com/en/news/2026/9/6/the-presentation-of-the-new-sporting-director-andrea-mancini