The Poolie Bunker

This is a piece posted elsewhere, Not by ME.
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I (like many of us I'm sure) have been fully in favour of three up / three down for ages. Why wouldn't you be? In that aim, we have the NL coordinating a 'day of action' with kick-offs at 3:03pm on Saturday week.

So far, nothing too much to disagree with.

However, have a read of these insights from the Chairman of Lincoln City, and we may want to turn our focus somewhere else if we want changes made that lead to 3 up and 3 down:

"Having been with Lincoln City when we were a National League club, I can fully understand the desire of NL clubs to push for a further promotion place into League 2. However, instead of the emotional and one-sided view presented, this time by York City, it would be far better for the NL and their clubs to rather push to address the issues that currently exist.

“It’s 22 years since the second promotion place from the NL was introduced and that only came through giving more money to EFL clubs to encourage them to vote in favour, but nothing was done to address the issues facing EFL clubs relegated to the NL.

“There are concerns we have put to the NL that we believe should be addressed in order to convince EFL clubs to vote in favour of an additional promotion and relegation place between the NL and League 2.

“Firstly, not only do EFL clubs lose their academy funding 2 years after relegation, but they also lose all rights to compensation for any of their academy players. We feel this is the most serious concern that needs to be resolved as it has dire consequences for clubs that are not immediately promoted back to the EFL and should also be a concern for English football in general to have long-standing academies at risk of being destroyed. If 3 clubs had been relegated from League 2 in the 23/24 season, this would have included a club with a Category 2 academy.

“We believe that so-called “bigger” clubs face prejudicial treatment in the NL, with the board dominated by representatives of clubs that have never been in the EFL. One only has to look at the irregular way Covid payments were distributed in the NL without the transparency and governance which took place in the EFL.

“To demonstrate this even further we were at the wrong end of a player compensation tribunal in our final year in the NL, coming up against a club whose Chairman was also a director of the NL. There was a total lack of transparency, independence or fairness in the ruling unlike you would find in the EFL or EPL.

“Although SCMP, which governs clubs spending on players in League 1 and 2, has many drawbacks including having no ultimate cap on player spending, there are at least controls in place whereas the NL at present has none of these.

“On a couple of occasions we have had the misfortune of NL clubs refusing to pay loan fees for a player. Unlike the situation in the EFL where the offending club would immediately be threatened with a transfer embargo, the NL has refused to take any action, forcing us to go through time-consuming FA tribunal processes to recover the funds.”

Ain't ever going to happen- a pointless exercise. EFL clubs will always sight some kind of issue to protect the status quo.

I think 3 up 3 down WILL come in over the next couple of years, now that the government is in favour and the new Football Regulator is a government appointment.

The Lincoln chairman makes some good points though. The National League Board doesn't reflect the interests of the majority of clubs in the NL, who are fully professional - it serves the interests of the majority of part-time clubs over all its 3 divisions.

Really the best thing to do would be to bring the NL into the EFL as Division 3 (or regionalise and have an EFL Division 2 North and Division 2 South).

Promotion from the National League is the bottle neck in the football system and has to change.
Too many instances of self interest in both viewpoinrpts and fortune favours the sugar daddy clubs to add to the frustration.

If it does happen- guaranteed that the first season of 3 down would tie in with us having just climbed back over the fence!

The idea of div 3 North and South seems good. However when you look at how due to relegation from a non regionalised league into NLS and NLN has worked the practicalities aren't straightforward - check out some of the "northern" teams in NLN.
Unless you drew a line geographically and went 4 up and 4 down with 2 northern and 2 southern clubs being relegated / promoted it becomes massively imbalanced further up the pyramid.
I think 3 up and 3 down will happen within the next 5 years and possibly NL becoming EFL div 3.

exactly. pools for a start would now vote for 3 up 3 down but if they ever got back into the league would vote to reduce the number first chance they got. feel fans would feel just the same. taking money out of it the worst relegation there is is from league 2 to the NL.