Football's North-South Divide

[Garrick]

I posted this in a different thread, but it's relevant here. Taking England by region...

Midlands on up is about 25 million people with 10 clubs.
Everything south of that is about 28 million with 9 clubs.

Even if the English footie ended today and we skipped the playoffs, sure 3 Northern clubs would get relegated, Villa, Newcastle, and S'land, and they'd be replaced by... Three more northern clubs. Boro, Derby, and Hull.

I guess I understand the argument, but I don't really agree. It lists clubs like Bolton, Blackpool, Wigan, and Tranmere... Well, none of those have ever been big top flight mainstays anyway save for Bolton. This isn't some change in the status quo, this is just how it's always been for them. And as other are pointing out, a lot of these clubs still have really good attendance.

I'd argue at this point that Southern clubs are already overvalued because it's on top of everybody's minds enough that this guy is writing an article about it. If I was a megarich foreign investor looking to scoop up a lower league side and try to cement them in Prem Crystal Palace-style, My shortlist would be...

Nottingham Forest
Birmingham City
Leeds United
Sheffield Wednesday
Sheffield United
Blackburn Rovers

Solid tradition at all of them (good number of older fans).
Big grounds (limited capital investment needed outside of players/manager).
From urban areas that are completely unrepresented, or severely underrepresented in Birmingham's case, in the top flight (Less competition for large numbers of newer fans).

 

[Philw]

Why support Bolton when you could support Manchester United or Manchester City? Why support Tranmere or Blackpool or Wigan when you could support Liverpool or Everton?

In terms of miles Bolton isn't that far from Manchester, or Liverpool or any where. but now, compared to the 50's it's closer.
The big cities will act like magnets.

Is the article complaining about the North/South divide, or small town fans supporting big city clubs? What about Reading, Bournemouth, Brighton (unitl recently), surely they would be supporting Chelsea, Southampton et al if the above reasoning were true? Also if fans were tight up, wouldn't that help the smaller clubs, as the fans are more likely to go there as they can't afford the likes of Man U/City??

 

[zirc]

Is the article complaining about the North/South divide, or small town fans supporting big city clubs? What about Reading, Bournemouth, Brighton (unitl recently), surely they would be supporting Chelsea, Southampton et al if the above reasoning were true? Also if fans were tight up, wouldn't that help the smaller clubs, as the fans are more likely to go there as they can't afford the likes of Man U/City??

Dodgy internet streams are free mate. And loads of people from those places do support money clubs, mate of mine is from Luton but supports Chelsea for no other reason than they win stuff.

 

[Tramps_mate]

Thought I would start a new thread although I have been discussing this in the "Villa going down thread" as I think it needs talking about (or perhaps not??) but here is the text from an article by Rod Liddle in the last Sunday Times:


North -South divide in football


"Bolton Wanderers last won a major tournament in 1958, two Nat Lofthouse goals sinking Manchester United to secure the FA Cup. This came at the end of the Trotters' most successful ever spell in English football, almost 30 years in the top flight.

The wonderful Lofthouse has been dead for almost five years, otherwise one might have expected him to still be leading the line-up for the rather less gilded Wanderers side of today. After all, their two star centre-forwards have a combined age of 71. And a combined total of three goals between them all season.

Whatever the problems at the Macron stadium this year (and last, come to that), I suspect that Shola Ameobi (34) and the, uh, talismanic Emile Heskey (37) are not the answer. They are not entirely the cause of the problems either, of course - or at least only partly, and even then indirectly.

Bolton sit bottom of the table having won just twice all season. They have debts of £172.9m and have recently appointed the insolvency expert Trevor Birch to the position of temporary chairman. The regular chairman, Phil Gartside, is seriously ill and stood down before Christmas. The owner, the Isle of Man based businessman Eddie Davies, who comes from Bolton, has said he can no longer bail the club out; he is said to be worth about £60m, or a third of the club's debts.

So go figure. It looks very much like Bolton Wanderers are this season's Blackpool, or maybe this season's Wigan Athletic; doomed as a consequence of striving too desperately to regain their place in the top division. Unable to find new investors with the requisite very deep pockets.

Why would you buy Bolton Wanderers, or Wigan, or Blackpool, unless you came from the respective towns and were filled with a sense of misted romance? The only financial reason to buy a club is to be in the top tier and stay there. That's when the real money rolls in. But do any of these aforementioned clubs have the potential any more to be top-flight contenders? Sadly, I don't think so.

The club has admitted to paying high wages for too long, in the hope that this would be rewarded by promotion. How many similarly-sized clubs have made the same mistake? Twenty, thirty? That's where old-timers Shola and Emile cop some of the indirect blame because I don't suppose they're on a pittance even now.

The financial rewards of Premier League football are so vast, so utterly out of context, that owners - spurred on by the fans, you have to say - will risk bankruptcy in order to get there. The statistics would suggest only a few will get there.

But there's another reason behind Bolton's plunge, something more systemic and depressing. The northwest of England was where our domestic game - and, thus,the word's domestic game - began. This is why there is such a profusion of clubs in a comparitively tiny area, from Merseyside in the west to the cotton-mill towns of Burnley and, across the border, Huddersfield, in the east. From Macclesfield in the south to Fleetwood in the north.

As the Football League noted several years ago, altogether too many clubs in this changed environment: some would have to go bust. That prediction was unnecessarily pessimistic: the smallest clubs have survived by not spending too much, by cutting their cloth appropriately. It is the middle-ranking clubs of the northwest who have felt the pinch.

Bolton's last win came against another one of these beleaguered entities - Blackburn Rovers, also struggling at the wrong end of the table. Bolton's average attendance is about 15,000, Blackburn's a thousand or so less. Not enough - by a good 10,000 or so - to sustain a team in the top flight for long. Not enough, really, to get out of the Championship. And this is the real problem for all of them. We are less culturally indebted to our home towns. We are much more mobile than in the days when Lofthouse was banging them in. And we have satellite TV.

Why support Bolton when you could support Manchester United or Manchester City? Why support Tranmere or Blackpool or Wigan when you could support Liverpool or Everton? The old ties no longer bind. If you are a potential investor prepared to dig deep for a while, is there any club in that region you'd gauge as having the potential for long-term top-flight football? The nearest, I reckon, is Leeds United, a county away. The demographics of football have changed markedly. The balance of power is shifting inexorably to the south, where the money is and where there are new conurbations of comparitively affluent people who would quite like to see Premier League football on their doorsteps.

Look at the attendances at Brighton and Reading. Many times what they were when both were small-time third or fourth-tier contenders. Bournemouth - now a vast and affluent conurbation - will one day be attracting 30,000 plus to games. It is a reflection of the general, horrible, disparity of income between north and south. I wish it were not so, with much the same forlorn desperation as Bolton's manager, Neil Lennon, might wish that Emile Heskey scores a goal or two."

Unfortunately Bolton Wanderers FC are dead. There is no way out of this. The best the fans can hope for is a Glasgow Rangers type situation. Wait until they go bust, buy the stadium from receivers, start a new club, Bolton FC or similar. The debt is not serviceable IMO..

 

[Mikey_Fitzgerald]

Just shows what a massive uphill battle Lennon has at Bolton really

I think any manager would struggle in that situation

Best to leave decisions on his managerial abilities until he takes his next job I think

 

[ijjysmith]

Just shows what a massive uphill battle Lennon has at Bolton really

I think any manager would struggle in that situation

Best to leave decisions on his managerial abilities until he takes his next job I think

I actually agree with you on Lennon here mate. Nobody could cope with what's gone on at Bolton.

 

[rascal]

I actually agree with you on Lennon here mate. Nobody could cope with what's gone on at Bolton.

I got bolton promoted on fm in my first season

 

[canuckblue]

At least we get to wear blue if we're the North.....