The Premier League said…

“The clubs welcomed the additional input into an ongoing process. However, they were of the opinion that bringing Celtic and Rangers into any form of Premier League set-up was not desirable or viable.”

So said the Premier League today.

Of the 20 Premier League clubs 14 voted against the proposal for Celtic and Rangers to join the League. I’m going to guess the only clubs in favour were those who felt happy they were not going to be relegated any time soon (United, City, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal and some other delusional former big club, maybe Totenham or Everton) and were not worried about loosing two places to the Scottish sides in a 36 team Premier-1 and -2.

Ultimately at the beginning of any year 10 or 12 clubs start the season with avoiding relegation to the Championship and the loss of Premiership money as job #1.

It seems that clubs have one chance in the lower division to come up before the combination of premier wage bill and Championship TV money (aided by the Premier League parachute payment) forces them to cut costs and compete on a more even footing.

Leeds, Coventry City, Leicester, both Sheffield sides, Reading and Ipswich have all fallen into this particular hole. Newcastle and West Brom seem to be taking this first year opportunity sitting in first and second with a little space between them and the rest. The third club relegated last year was Middlesborough, are they are just a couple of points out of the playoff picture.

The idea of Premier-2 remains alive. This has been talked about for a while and formally proposed by Bolton chairman Phil Gartside as a way to spread the TV money around, get a little more parity and reduce the spending gap between the elite and the rest.

If Premier-1 and -2 were to come into existence today Coventry City would be the 37^th placed club.

Another thing that I found interesting was no discussion of promotion/relegation with the Football League (current Championship, League 1 and League 2) that I could find. As they are a separate body anyway, there would be nothing to stop Premier-1 and -2 becoming a closed shop totally outside the Football League pyramid. If this were to happen it would be a change far bigger than bringing the two Scottish giants into the league.

Incidentally the TV money is astounding, the Premier League domestic TV and foreign TV deals combined are worth a little under $5 billion (yes billion) in round numbers. To put this into perspective this is more than Major League Baseball ($430 million/year), the National Football League ($3 billion/year) and the National Basketball Association ($920 million/year) combined.