The Ups and Downs of English Football
The striking effects of promotion and relegation within the English Football League
What to expect:
Photo by Paul-Hudson Erwin, Wembley Stadium, London
Photo by Paul-Hudson Erwin, Wembley Stadium, London
The Impact of Promotion and Relegation in the EFL
Explaining the recent history of promotion and relegation within the EFL and looking at its current impact - who is winning and who is losing.
Photo from Wikipedia Commons, Wembley Stadium, Playoff Finals
Photo from Wikipedia Commons, Wembley Stadium, Playoff Finals
The Playoff Finals - Promotion Highs
Going beyond the pitch with playoff final winners Sheffield Wednesday and Luton Town. Watch the video explainer with on-the-street interviews.
Photo by Jaleel Akbash on Unsplash
Photo by Jaleel Akbash on Unsplash
Yo-Yo Clubs in English Football
Diving into what's behind the clubs that find themselves too good for the Championship but can't quite compete in the Premier League.
Photo by Paul-Hudson Erwin, Taty Castellanos at Yankee Stadium
Photo by Paul-Hudson Erwin, Taty Castellanos at Yankee Stadium
The Supporter's View
Fans from Luton Town and Hull City discuss the tumultuous experiences they've stomached throughout their fandom. Listen to the podcast that explains the chaos behind the stories.
The Impact of Promotion and Relegation in the EFL
The Premier League is often regarded as the promised land in English football as well as the best league in the world. Simply put, it’s the top division in the country and home to debatably the best teams in the world – so it’s no secret how it landed such a nickname. What does it take for a club to reach this top division, and what happens when the mighty fall? Plenty of teams experience different phases, commonly either yo-yoing back and forth between the top two divisions or fighting back to get to where they feel they belong, which could take years. Once every blue moon there are true fairy tale stories; clubs emerge from out of thin air to make it to the promised land for the first time ever or lay it all on the line win trophies they could only dream of before. With the last kick of the 2022/23 season there were a multitude of new storylines, from Wrexham’s return to the English Football League (EFL) to Luton Town’s incredible rise from non-league football to the Premier League, where they will be residing for the first time ever in their history.
Fairy tale stories like these are only possible because of the system that is used in English football – promotion and relegation. Teams in the lower divisions have a chance to get to the higher leagues by finishing atop their division’s table at the season’s end – and by inverse the teams that finish at the bottom of their division table get to have a taste of the league just below them. There’s a lot more to it all than just winning and losing, as clubs can suffer financial troubles when relegated and less supporters may show up if the team is not performing well, but when a club succeeds and rises through the divisions it’s hard to find any negatives. When Luton Town reached the Premier League through the playoff finals this past May, winning it in penalties, the story became instantly iconic. For a small football club, this was no small feat.
For a club like Luton Town this sort of success is unprecedented, making it to the Premier League for the first time in their history after dipping down into non-league football only ten years ago surely wasn’t on any Luton supporters’ minds, but the club has defied the norm. For teams like this who fall out of the English Football League and tumble down into non-league football, it can be a monumental task to get back in – but Luton Town have done the unthinkable.
The club based about an hour outside of Greater London has slowly but surely made their way up the pyramid and have broken into the top flight. They’ve redefined the old Premier League standards that have been virtually set in stone and quite literally rewritten the rules to get into the country’s top division. Clubs who have spent considerable time outside of the EFL pyramid or who have never even been in the top division will now have fantasy dreams about playing in it. This makes Luton’s story a welcome one for Wrexham AFC, who have been bought by Hollywood stars in hopes of a legendary rise through the divisions and a return to the top flight for the historic club that makes for the perfect fairy tale.
This recent example with Luton Town is particularly intriguing given the history of the English Football League – it doesn’t normally make room for outsiders. Looking at the champions of the top division in English Football throughout the past 40 years, it doesn’t seem like a highly competitive league with a multitude of winners – rather an exclusive club that only a handful are invited to. The winners of the top division in England, which has been renamed the Premier League since the 1992/93 season, only includes a handful of clubs, with Manchester United, Manchester City, and Chelsea occupying the majority of the winners’ medals. The recent tradition defying standout is Leicester City's 2016 title, all thanks to a one-in-a-million season that is likely to never be repeated. Ironically, they’ve just been relegated and are heading back to the Championship, the second division, for the first time in 9 years and join Blackburn Rovers as the only two teams to have been relegated from the Premier League after winning it. Roger Knoll, a researcher familiar with the EFL, shares his findings on repeat champions in the top division:
“Premier League championships have been relatively concentrated. A total of 61 teams played in the Premier League between 1888-89 and 2000-1, and 23 have won the championship.”
Promotion and relegation within the English Football League was not always as cut and dry as it seems now. The changing of teams between divisions would happen irregularly, meaning it didn’t always happen every year and when it did happen it didn’t have to be based off of the worst performing team. Knoll explains:
“Beginning with the 1950-51 season, the members of the Nationwide Football League decided whether to demote one team and promote another at the end of the season based upon on-field and financial performance and the suitability of a team’s venue. In some cases, the demoted team is not the team that finished at the bottom”.
In Luton Town’s case, they ended up being relegated out of the EFL in 2008 after the league had deemed them to have financial irregularities and hit them with a 30-point deduction. This can and still happens throughout the league with Derby County being the latest team in 2022 to be hit with a points deduction while playing in the Championship, and now they find themselves in the division below.
Relegation is a tough pill to swallow, no matter if you know you’re going down with ten matches to go or if it happens with the last kick of the season. Southampton FC was one of three clubs relegated out of the Premier League this past season, which came as a surprise to many because of their past season performances and constant push into the top ten, not to mention they had been part of the league since 2005. James Ward-Prowse, Southampton FC club captain and England international, didn’t hold back his thoughts during a post-match interview: “From the first day of preseason right until now you could feel the standards of the club slipped away and that’s ultimately why we are where we are now… over the last ten years we’ve had consistency, belief, and structure within the club and I think that’s wavered a little bit…” Ward-Prowse specifically mentions the drop in standards he’s seen from his teammates and from the club’s front office, perhaps taking a shot at their transfer policy or lack of to sign better players to help the club as a whole be more competitive. For a player who grew up at the club and has never transferred to another team, these kinds of words are not to be taken lightly.
Clubs that bounce in between divisions are also a common feature of the English Football League and have even found a nickname for themselves – they are called Yo-Yo clubs. The most common space you’ll find these clubs bouncing around is between the top two divisions, with several teams finding themselves too good for the Championship but not good enough for the Premier League. In the history of the top two divisions in English football, however, this seems to be a common theme as Knoll found there to be “virtually no change” of the changing of teams in the top two leagues in England. For clubs vying to stay in the Premier League it’s a different story.
Considering the teams that don’t actively challenge for the top flight title but instead find themselves playing division shuffle, there is a “considerable turnover in Premier League membership”. The clubs that find themselves in this yo-yo position are not always the same. The so-called yo-yo baton is passed between teams fluidly and for teams who hand it off more times than not they find themselves in the Championship for extended periods. Floating around the top half of the second tier’s table is where you’ll find many regular yo-yo teams now – Watford, West Brom, and Norwich City all found themselves in that exact position last season. Fulham, a popular yo-yo contender, surprisingly found themselves finishing 10th in the Premier League after the 2022/23 season which was one of the best ever seasons from a newly promoted club. While these relay teams are common first division members, for a team to find itself outside of the English Football League and then inside of the Premier League within ten years, as Luton Town have done, it’s quite an incredible feat. And it’s thanks to the EFL’s playoff format to get into the higher divisions that this story is even a reality.
The Playoff Finals - Promotion Highs
One hundred and twenty minutes are up – and after a prolonged season it’s all on the line between Luton Town and Coventry City in this playoff final that will determine which club plays in the Premier League and which club spends the next season in the Championship. This match, the Playoff Final to make it to the Premier League, has the most on the line of any game in the English Football League because of the full plate of rewards – a main dish of top flight football with hefty sides of money, money, and more money. A penalty shootout with this much pressure is surely a recipe for a heart attack on the owners, but the players need to remain calm if they want to reach the promised land. They’ve undoubtedly been waiting for this moment their whole lives.
Now it's all in their hands, 11 v 11 turns to 1 v 1, penalty taker versus penalty saver. Luton starts the shootout, Carlton Morris scores. Coventry up next, Matt Godden slots his penalty home. The nervy but firm penalties continue until it reads 6-5, with Luton ahead. Fankaty Dabo, Coventry City defender, steps up. He misses, and in the blink of an eye Luton Town are promoted! Their iconic ascension from non-league football to the Premier League has finally become a reality in the most dramatic of fashions. They’re going to the Premier League – they’ve finally made it to the promised land for the first time in their club’s history.
What does winning this final mean for Luton Town, or any other club that succeeds from this position? Money, for one thing. The revenue this one game will bring in for Luton is an estimated £170 million for the next three seasons, a figure that could rise to £290 million if the club manage to fend off relegation next season. These figures from were gathered by the Deloitte Sports Business Group, with assistant director Zal Udwadia claiming the playoff final match “offers the biggest financial prize in world football.” The sports business group also estimates the club could bring in an additional £90m during the course of one Premier League season.
For Luton Town, this is a monumental sum of money for a club that rarely splashes in the transfer market. Their 180-year-old stadium is a testament to that – Kenilworth Road is one of the oldest stadiums in England and has yet to receive proper renovations, but Luton will be forced to spend £10 million before the start of the upcoming Premier League season just to comply with regulations. These upgrades however are yet to be fully integrated into Kenilworth Road, and Luton already announcing they will have to postpone their first home match against Burnley. Luton’s chief executive Gary Sweet has said this postponement is due to the fact they can’t guarantee that any work being done on the stadium wouldn’t affect the match. As of now, several stadium entrances require fans to enter through either a storefront or residential home – but many will argue that just adds to the ambiance of the experience and is a testament to what the club is about. There are already plans to move to another bigger stadium in as soon as next year as Kenilworth Road is not able to be upgraded any further due to its proximity to houses and shops – which closely surround the stadium making it feel like the tube during rush hour.
Luton’s first ever adventure in the Premier League has more of an importance to the club than just an increase in funds. Getting back to the top level has the feeling of a renaissance for supporters given their history: they spent 10 years in the top division during the 1980s, won the League Cup in 1988 after beating Arsenal in a comeback victory, and were one year shy of competing in the first ever Premier League season in 1992/1993 until relegation befell them the season prior. More recently in the 2008 season, Luton were under the threat of bankruptcy until a group of supporters stepped in to buy the club at the last possible minute to save it. Ever since that scare, supporters like James Cunliffe have just been happy to see a stable and functional club:
“We've gone from being a Championship side to being relegated all the way down to the bottom division of the football league and slapped with a 30-point penalty before a ball has even been kicked - after the current owners saved it very literally with seconds before it went out of business. When you've experienced that, it puts a different perspective on results and the day to day of football - the win, lose, or draw, relegation and promotion.”
After everything that Luton Town and the supporters have been through, to seal their promotion by winning their Playoff Final on penalties was a cherry on top of the sundae that no one remembered ordering. It’s rare enough of a feat to achieve the promotions that Luton has in the past decade but to then make the playoffs and secure Premier League football through penalties, it’s the type of story that you only hear about in legends. The EFL’s format that is used to determine the third promotion spot is another unique aspect to this story – Luton didn’t get this promotion the easy way by getting automatically promoted through spots one and two in the league table. Aiming to get promoted via the playoff route is especially gut wrenching as a fan, not to mention the added pressure when the match goes to penalties.
Sheffield Wednesday returned to the Championship in a similar dramatic fashion, starting by overcoming a 0-4 deficit against Peterborough in the League One Playoff semi-finals to make it to the Playoff finals against Barnsley. Wednesday had only just been relegated and they were eager to get back to the Championship and found themselves one win away. With both sides stuck in a deadlock and the game still 0-0 after 90 minutes, extra time beckoned. The goal drought continued into the 120th minute – until in the third minute of added time forward Josh Windass hit an incredible strike with his head to win the match, and send them up to the Championship.
Like with Luton Town, it's a split-second moment of brilliance that sees Sheffield Wednesday promoted, back to where they belong. According to many fans, this is what was expected of the team, and they should have already been plying their trade in the second division – but celebrations were still in order for the Yorkshire club.
Earning a promotion from League One to the Championship is not nearly as lucrative as the top-flight pay out, as clubs get rewarded with an estimated £8m. The key factor in getting promoted to the Championship, however, is the relative proximity to the greatest football league in the world, the Premier League. That’s the real prize, and Sheffield Wednesday fans already have their eyes set on a return to the top flight especially after rivals Sheffield United secured their return with a second-place finish in the Championship this past season. The passion with which Wednesday fans support their club screams a deserving Premier League debut.
Wembley Stadium, by Paul-Hudson Erwin
Wembley Stadium, by Paul-Hudson Erwin
Inside Wembley Stadium, credit @ahmednur94
Inside Wembley Stadium, credit @ahmednur94
Selhurst Park, by Paul-Hudson Erwin
Selhurst Park, by Paul-Hudson Erwin
Etihad Stadium, by Paul-Hudson Erwin
Etihad Stadium, by Paul-Hudson Erwin
The Stories Behind the 2023 EFL Playoff Finals
Watch below via YouTube
Yo-Yo Clubs in English Football
For many football clubs in England, success has many different definitions and many different levels – and it’s common for a team to experience both success and failure in short periods of time. Experiencing success and failure continuously back-to-back, however, is also a phenomenon that occurs within the English Football League, and the clubs that go through this are known as 'Yo-Yo' clubs. The most well-known yo-yo clubs are the ones that operate between the Championship and the Premier League – in recent years most notably West Bromwich Albion, Norwich City, Watford, Fulham, and Hull City.
For these clubs, it would almost seem the more stable option is to form a new league where they can all compete instead of constantly going up and down between divisions. Within the last decade these teams have each been relegated out of the Premier League and promoted from the Championship at least twice, and some even more. Although teams in this precarious position are prepared to bounce back and forth between the divisions, there are several nuanced financial side-effects that their front offices must be aware of, for both promotion and relegation.
Roger Knoll is one researcher familiar with the EFL and has spent time studying the effects of promotion and relegation within England. Yo-yo clubs are an interesting demographic because of their nature of not being tied to a certain league, but rather being on the fringes of one league that they can dominate but another that they don’t quite fit into. Knoll describes a certain economic affect that can happen to clubs that don’t quite fit into a league that they are promoted to, based on the reality that it might be too big of a market for them:
“Promotion increases the marginal revenue product of quality, and so causes the team to spend more on players if it joins a higher league… a team that should be in a lower league expects to finish higher in the standings in the lower league but spend more money for players in the better league”.
What are yo-yo clubs meant to do, then? It would surely be impractical to not win a division you could win, get promoted, and earn more money. The financial impact of going up a division and subsequently spending more money on players is certainly not invisible. Many teams in between England’s top two flights have gone through this sort of phase, up and down repeatedly. Many of them have spent more time down than above, with the recent exception of Fulham having a strong 2022/23 season. Most clubs that have been popular yo-yos in the last ten years, however, find themselves in the Championship or lower and have not spent much time in the Premier League.
Hull City’s experience as a yo-yo club doesn’t go too far back into their recent history; they slid around between the top two divisions and even sank down to the third tier all between 2014 and 2021. Their league roulette played out as such: City were relegated from Premier League in the 2014/15 season, then promoted back in 2015/16, relegated again in 2016/17, spent a few seasons in the Championship, relegated to League One in 2019/20, and most recently promoted back to the Championship in the 2020/21 season. From first glance, the journey they’ve had sounds like a roller coaster to say the least and from a supporter’s viewpoint a bit frustrating. Playing in the top division and then finding yourself in the third tier a mere three years later is disappointing. This journey from Hull is not uncommon in the English Football League, and many teams who teetered at the bottom of the Premier League in the last ten years have found themselves in the same state.
Some clubs also made the journey down to the third tier, Sunderland taking a trip as recently as the 2021/22 season. Bouncing back up a division straight away is the most important play a club can make when going back down. This is what many teams try and do after slipping into the Championship, but as some may agree with the fight to get to the top division from the second one is even more of a gruesome battle and several clubs are all fighting for the three coveted spots. With Hull City and other yo-yo clubs, the combined nature of the successes and failures has left a mark on those that support their club.
Supporters always deal with highs and lows at their club, irrespective if that means they are getting promoted and relegated. If you support a club in England, there’s an almost 100% chance that you’ve supported them since birth, and one bad season won’t see you test the waters with another team because that would be treason. Rolling with this mindset, it’s easy to conclude that the yo-yo effect would have little impact on the supporters. For Hull City, however, the impact was felt more because of the blatant disregard that the owners had for the supporters and the club itself. I chatted with Alex Green, the Hull City Supporter’s Club media officer, who explained to me how the owners seemed to have no recognition of the connection the club should have to its fans. They eradicated ticket concessions, rarely if ever attended matches in person, and made no attempt to sign players to succeed, instead solely focused on the club as a money-making business for themselves. He described this as asset stripping, which during a successful period at the club sent all the wrong messages:
“We had the new owners in the early 2010s and did really well. Two promotions, FA cup final, played Europa League football, which was unprecedented for Hull City. Then the owners tried to change the name of the club to Hull Tigers but that created a big backlash… From my experience what you'll see in the future is a generation of fans that don't support Hull City, and you can't blame them because of how the club was set up.”
The previous Hull City owners didn’t support the fans wishes on the field and off – they even disbanded all concession prices meaning many fans were priced out of games during their tenure. This is what Alex believes led to a whole generation of Hull fans not even supporting their football team. It’s not all grim for Hull City now at least, with new owner Acun Ilicali in charge since January of last year. He’s started off his tenure with some strong assertions and heart-warming messages that will hopefully bring the community of Hull back together to support City. Ilicali immediately warmed to the fans with his instant love for everything Hull as well as swooning quotes in the media:
"My system is being one family. I’m going to make a big family in Hull City, and all the Hull people will be involved in it.”
With an owner this dedicated and ambitions of taking Hull City to the promised land, it seems like it’s only a matter of time before the club is handed back the yo-yo baton, and this time the fans may sincerely care what happens with their club. After recently dipping into the third tier, fans will likely want to see stability in their results on the pitch before they get head high with ideas of a Premier League return. It’s step by step for now, but it seems like the fans are just happy to feel included and part of the club again with Ilicali at the wheel.
Fulham FC are another club who have fallen victim to yo-yoing between the top two divisions of the English Football League, having been relegated in 2021 to the Championship and subsequently promoted back to the Premier League in 2022, truly living up to the 'Yo-Yo' nickname. Fulham’s recent history shows scores of relegations and promotions, which can be concerning from a front office or supporter’s viewpoint. The manager who led Fulham to relegation in 2021, Scott Parker, gave an interview to Sky Sports detailing the club’s constant battle between the top two flights:
“When your aim is always to grab something and be desperate for something, the likely scenario is the rollercoaster which we’re on at the moment – relegation, promotion, relegation…we need to make some big decisions and we need to understand where we ought to get to and what we have to do”.
Parker mentions how critical it is for the club to try to get off the rollercoaster that they find themselves on, which feels like a common theme for clubs in the yo-yo cycle. There’s no net positive to being put through the heartbreak of getting relegated as soon as you are promoted, for the supporters and for everyone at the club.
The Supporter's View
Clubs began competing in England with the creation of the first football league in 1888, with supporters following them to the heights and depths of wherever they may find themselves. Over the course of this project, and the many interviews with supporters of teams who find themselves in the lower divisions or the Premier League, I’ve found many people are not entirely concerned with what league their club plays in. This point became interesting to me because as a football enjoyer I’ve always found myself, as many others have, partial to watching the best football one possibly can – the top divisions in each ‘top five’ country and the Champions League are always thrilling. But for loyal supporters to clubs that mean so much more and often times act as supporting pillars in communities, the division is irrelevant. Rather, the most important aspect for supporters is whether their club is stable or not.
Bury FC – have you heard of them? If you haven’t that’s understandable, because they don’t exist anymore. After a proposed takeover collapsed and a notice from the EFL overdue, there was seemingly nothing else left to do but to expel them from English football. This left their fanbase disappointed and quite upset – what would you do if the team you grew up supporting, in the town you lived in, disappeared into thin air? When the news broke outside of Gigg Lane, what was Bury’s stadium, fans voiced their strong opinions:
This is but one example within English football there is a notorious history of clubs going bankrupt or folding or dissolving altogether – which has a tremendous ripple effect on the communities that these clubs are a part of. Sometimes, when a club is in danger of going under due to financial irregularities or shortcomings, supporters will step in and rally together to raise money and save their club. When a club can’t be saved, which happened to Rushden & Diamonds FC, supporters band together after the fact and create what’s called a phoenix club – a club that figuratively rises from the ashes of the old one but that typically retains a similar name with similar kits, and usually at the same ground. For Rushden & Diamonds FC, a club that formed as a merger in 1992 and subsequently went under in 2011, supporters created a phoenix club in that same year: AFC Rushden & Diamonds.
Luton Town almost incurred this fate upon themselves after a very close call with dissolution in 2007 due to financial issues. The club was thrown into administrative receivership after irreversible money mismanagement by previous owners, but then up stepped the Luton Town Football Club 2020 consortium, aka the Luton Town Supporter’s Trust. A deal was enacted swiftly that provided the consortium 50,000 shares in the club, giving the fans a majority ownership. This is a big reason why Luton’s supporters and the greater community are so intertwined with the club. When the club enjoys success, the support is felt enormously, especially this past season after the Hatters won promotion to the Premier League for the first time. James Cunliffe, Luton Town fan and journalist, describes just how celebratory it was on the streets after the club’s playoff final win:
“They have strong ties to the community. When they had the promotion party a couple of days after the Wembley win, the council estimated about 20,000 people turned up on the streets. I mean, I've seen the pictures. I think that's probably more than that.”
Luton Town’s strong relationship with its supporters is not uncommon for smaller clubs in the English Football League, but what’s even more remarkable is the community’s strength through tough times. When the consortium stepped in after the club had almost gone bankrupt in 2007, there were still repercussions from the previous owners. Before the start of the 2008/09 season, the club was deducted a massive 30-points before a ball was even kicked. Luton was guaranteed a relegation. And they didn’t have just one, but instead tumbled out of the football league entirely, only re-entering five years later in 2014. The fanbase stuck around and was simply happy to have a football club to support. The Hatters have now ascended all the way to the Premier League, but they certainly don’t forget their hardships. There’s still resentment towards the FA after their 30-point deduction as seen by a banner in Kenilworth Road that reads “F**ck the FA and f**ck the Football League”.
Despite making it back to England’s top division, nothing has changed since 2007 for fans like James: his club has and will always mean everything to him regardless of what league they compete in. This is surely the view of many if not all Luton supporters, but something tells me they thoroughly enjoyed this last promotion and will be looking forward to welcoming the league’s best to Kenilworth Road. James puts his thoughts on Luton’s rise into perspective:
“If you didn't have a football club to support, the promotions or relegations wouldn’t matter anyway. I can't tell you how close it was before this club did not exist, so just to have it there in the bigger picture is a much more important thing than what league you're in.”
Fans chanting 'Haaland' at Etihad Stadium, Manchester
Fans chanting 'Haaland' at Etihad Stadium, Manchester
Hull City are another football club with meaningful community ties in their city, and currently ply their trade in the Championship tier of English football. They’ve had yo-yo periods bouncing between divisions, but their supporters have stuck with them, for the most part. Being the only professional team in the area makes it a bit easier to garner support, even if there’s not much success to speak of. Like Luton, supporting Hull is quite a unique experience because you likely only support the team if you grew up or live in the city itself. Alex Green is a media officer for Hull City’s Official Supporter’s club and a lifelong fan, naturally because he grew up in Hull. He tells me about the local effect:
“Hull is quite a locally supported team. You have your Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea. Everybody supports them. But if you support a team like Hull City, chances are you're probably not going to meet anyone outside of Hull that supports them.”
Locals being thoroughly committed to supporting a club and people casually attending a couple matches if any are a big difference, though, and having a local fanbase only gets a club so far if the owners don’t make any effort to connect. This is the unfortunate reality of what happened with Hull’s previous owners, who sought no reliance from the fans and instead solely treated the club as a business opportunity. The club has undoubtedly developed some great players such as Andy Robertson and Harry Maguire, one now a Champions League and Premier League winner and the other a captain for England and Manchester United. At the time of their rise with Hull, however, the former owners chose to cash in to make sure the club was back in the green – but they didn’t bother signing any worthy replacements. The team that was being fielded wasn’t competitive enough anymore, and thus after being relegated back to the Championship after the 2016/17 season, they sank even further and found themselves in League One in 2020. Alex talks me through what he saw going on at the club during this stage:
“It's about finding the balance between being sustainable and being competitive, and I think our previous owners, to put it fairly nicely, only cared about keeping the club sustainable rather than competitive. And for fans that was a real disconnect.”
This left an awkward mark on the club as fans were not attending matches and didn’t care about the team – and for Hull, a club centred around its local fanbase, it hurt them. They had already been yo-yoing around the top two divisions in the mid 2010s but sinking to League One was not a pretty sight. For the supporters who were still following, this league bounce and ultimate stay in the second tier didn’t have any massive effect despite playing in the Premier League a mere five years earlier. For a local team like Hull City, supporters were not going to give up that easily on them, no matter if they were losing in blowouts every weekend or playing to tight draws. Alex shared some thoughts on the mindset of Hull fans who didn’t fail to turn up every weekend:
“Fans don't care about [the league] when they go to a stadium on a weekend, they want to see a competitive game. I don't mind if we lose. Obviously you want to win every week, but if you lose and your team plays well, that's absolutely fine. You're not going to win every game.”
This behaviour exhibited by Hull City fans is not uncommon for smaller teams in the EFL. In fact, it’s a mirror image of how Luton Town fans reacted when their club was relegated to outside of the football league entirely: they stuck with their team no matter what because that was the team that they grew up supporting. It didn’t matter if the owner had no clue how to run a football club, the fans waited until a new one arrived. If their club was on the verge of dissolving, not a problem, they stepped up and made sure it didn’t happen. Supporters have proven to the football world that they have more power than any league or owner that tries to step in their way, so my best advice: don’t get in their way.
Listen to the short podcast, The Fan View, where I talk with James Cunliffe and Alex Green to dive into more details of the impact that supporters have at Luton Town and Hull City.
Hear P-H talk with guests James Cunliffe and Alex Green about the mighty impact that supporters have in regards to their football clubs.
The Impact of Promotion and Relegation in the EFL (continued)
It’s no surprise that the playoff finals continually produce drama each year with more and more teams wanting a taste of the promised land and a fat payday. This year was no different for the clubs who were promoted, with Sheffield Wednesday’s redemption to the Championship complete and Luton Town’s iconic fairy tale rise the Premier League one for the ages. It’s almost as if it was written in the stars. With the level of football that’s being played in England, one would almost expect these kinds of crazy storylines and natural competitiveness between any team, no matter the league. It’s often debated if the Premier League is the best and most challenging football league in the world, which would make the English Football League the best football pyramid in the world. Alex Green is a lifelong Hull City fan who’s seen his team play in the top three divisions of the pyramid, and he feels the same way:
“England's probably one of the strongest football pyramids probably in the world. You go down to the National League, which is National League North and South semi-professional football, 5th, 6th, 7th tier, they'll get more [fans] to those games than some other European countries get in their second division.”
If the fans are showing out, you know the football is good even among the lower tiers. With the current system of promotion and relegation in effect for every single tier of English football and the quality of football being relatively high so low into the divisions, then surely there can be a conclusion to the impact of promotion and relegation in the EFL. In summation, it’s caused English football to be the strongest pyramid in the world, and not many would disagree with you on this island. This is backed up by the FA Cup, English football’s longest running cup competition that starts out all the way at the bottom of the pyramid with the chance for the minnows to face the sharks. And the minnows fight back against the sharks, with several famous performances of lower league teams against Premier League teams like when third tier Bradford City beat Chelsea in the fourth round of the cup in 2015. Countless examples like this match surely cement that the effects of promotion and relegation in English football are unmistakably positive for everyone involved, from the bottom of the pyramid all the way to the top.
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