Talk:English Football League

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I have always thought the English football league approach of promoting and demoting teams within a ranked set of leagues based on their records would make an admirable model for other sports, particularly baseball. I'd be interested in hearing more about how the thing actually works. Is it based solely on standings, or could a team drop down a league on its own for rebuidling, etc.Ortolan88

OK, this is how it works. Depending on the league (and what is happening that year e.g. the League may be slimming down the Premiership for example) 3, sometimes 4 teams are relegated on account of their having accrued fewer points than the other teams in the league. The next league lower down will promote 2 or 3 teams automatically on account of their having the most points in that league. The next 4 teams are put in the play-offs (run on a knock-out basis) for the remaining promotion place. With Division 3, a team may not necessarily be relegated to the Conference if the team coming up don't have a suitable ground (this happened to Stevenage Borough a few years back). Only one team gets kicked out at present; plans are in place for this to become two up/two down in a few years. Hope this satisfies your curiousity. Teams can also be relegated in exceptional circumstances for financial impropriety, and various other skullduggeries; normally, just points are deducted for misconduct. user:sjcsjc

  • Two team do go down from the 3rd Division at present. The Conference play-offs introduced a year or two ago make that possible batch

Is this page about the English Football League or about English Football League teams? If it's the former it should be move to that heading.

There should be some discussion of the history of the LEAGUE itself. -- Zoe
I think this covers all bases admirably, but I don't have any particularly strong feelings on the subject. The history will definitely need doing sometime; at the moment I am up to my neck in Lokasenna and Skirnismal... If anyone's volunteering... user:sjc
I see that mention of Welsh teams playing in the English league has been taken out of the article. I think this is wrong as the article's about English Football League teams rather than English Football League teams, if you see my point. The article still has links to Wrexham, Cardiff, and Swansea, after all! -- Arwel 22:25 18 May 2003 (UTC)
Indeed Arwel, it has been restored, don't forget Merthyr. Mintguy 22:29 18 May 2003 (UTC)

In expanding the list of cup competitions I removed the short-lived and now defunct Anglo-Italian Cup. I also made FA Trophy and FA Vase match FA Cup (no full stops), which is the "true" title of that article. --rbrwr

I think a decision needs to be made about this article. Is it about The Football League in which case it should have the history of that organization. Or is it just a place to list English League clubs. At the moment The Football League redirects to this page and it's a bit of a cross between the two. Mintguy 20:35, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)


Following on from the comment above, that I made several months ago. I think it's time to distinguish between the English Football League system and The Football League. The Football League has a long and rich history history in its own right and it seems a bit of a shame to lump this in with discussion about the "modern upstart" The Premiership. Mintguy 12:15, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I agree, though I do not have the time or energy to do it myself. --rbrwrˆ
I agree the need to distinguish but the problem is that we often talk about league goals or league appearances. I bet that there are now lots of links that don't make sense and I hope that User:Madw has the energy to dab them all. Come to think of it, I haven't seen English Football League system yet. It would have been simple enough to move the old page there wouldn't it? Cutler 21:07, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)
If created, I think this page should explain in great detail, the creation of the Premiership and the reasons for the name changes to Divisions one to four. Also: perhaps this should be merged with the article on football pyramid under the name English football league system - note the lower case as we are not just talking about The Football League.
SimonMayer 21:55, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)
We need to take care here as when we talk about league goals etc we mean the old divisions 1-4 and Premier + new 1-3, not the pyramid. I admit that there's not a general solution to this problem in common usage. Even the term professional doesn't exclude the pyramid these days. Perhaps we should use the term English league for the (currently) top four divisions. Cutler 22:28, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The Premiership are no longer part of The Football League, so perhaps there should be a generic page (for New Divisions one to three and the old Divisions one to four). Also a page on the football league system in England. This page would be about all leagues in the pyramid. After all, the North West Counties Division is a league and is part of the structure of leagues.
SimonMayer 22:40, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)
A quick check of (most of) the links to this page shows that all is OK, as they all refer to The Football League. Certainly the history section of this page needs expanding to discuss in more detail the development of the League in general and the creation of the Premiership in particular (and the Premiership page needs this info too). It seems to me that the football pyramid page is the most suitable page to develop for issues relating to all English football leagues, including a brief introduction to the overall structure and the different leagues, but with links to separate pages for more details of the individual leagues - all the basics are already there. I don't know about a name change - wouldn't English football league system be confusing? The National League System is the formal name and an alternative if the page name is changed. Finally, what about a Football League records page? This could include division champions (currently on the individual First Division, etc. pages), promoted and relegated clubs, goals, appearances, etc. Putting this on a separate page would prevent the Football League page from becoming too long and cumbersome. A separate FA Premier League records page could also be created, with both pages having a brief explanation of the break up and what this means for records. Alternatively, one longer English football records page could be created. Anyway, what we would end up with is an overview pyramid page, separate and more detailed pages for each league/competition, and one or two records pages. I think that would work, but that's just my humble opinion... Madw 01:46, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I just note that League of Wales has a fairly comprehensive explanation of the Welsh pyramid... -- Arwel 02:08, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
OK. I've forced the issue with this Arthur Rowley stub. Of course, what I have written is strictly correct but the intention is that Rowley's record holds even in the era of The Premiership. How can we correctly express what is meant here? Cutler 22:01, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
It seems to me that virtually all football records belong to the Football League era, and this is likely to remain the case. One exception would obviously be Arsenal matching (surpassing?) the number of games undefeated at the beginning of a season. So an English football records page could include all the records, with a subsection or additional notes including Premiership records where they differ. I don't think Premiership records can be ignored simply because they don't break the overall record. Already they are quoted regularly and that it is only likely to increase with time. So when it comes to goals, both Arthur Rowley and Alan Shearer would be included. It would not be difficult to put this into a table format... Opinions? Madw 00:02, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Happy to see how proposal works out in practice! Cutler 00:16, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Well done to all those who have been working on this article recently. Sorting this out is something I have wanted to for along time but not got round to doing. When I have some time at the weekend I'll work on it myself. However I should point out something. Firstly, the page has been cut-and paste moved to Football League. Two things are wrong with this. Firstly it's a cut and past move and secondly it should have been moved to The Football League. just like 'The FA' The definite article is part of the name. Mintguy (T)

I see that IP 62.64.xxx.xxx has done a whole host of shuffling about of articles with cut-and paste moves. Whoever you are can you please NOT do this. You lose the history of an article when you do this. Please create an account so that you can move pages properly. Mintguy (T) 08:34, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)