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The Football League has more to offer English soccer fans than the Premier League

Disagree

by Tim Carter

If you prefer watching soccer of a far higher quality then you can only disagree with the debate title. Year after year it is likely that at least two out of the three promoted teams will be relegated again. The main reason suggested for this is their lack of economic strength,but an equally valid cause is that their preparation for the Premier League is by playing with outdated tactics against substandard teams. As soon as they start playing Premiership teams it is a steep learning curve that they need to adapt to quickly to survive.

English soccer fans vote every year in favour of the "disagree" argument. This assertion is proved by the rise in attendances of every single club who has ever been promoted to the Premier League.Before you quickly counter my argument by saying that is only because fairweather fans like to follow a successful team, consider for a moment the example of Derby County in the season just finished. Derby were the least successful club in the history of the Premiership to date, but their attendances were consistently high. Derby's fans wanted to experience the excitement of watching all the premiership teams and also of travelling to all the top stadiums before the inevitable return to the lower standard of the Football League.

The Premier League synthesises the best of British players alongside high quality imported talent played in grounds that have undergone a massive transformation in terms of comfort and indeed, aesthetically too. The regular Premiership teams offer the whole package whilst the Football League teams can only aspire to that pinnacle.Media coverage is intrisically driven by the higher profile products and their impact on the public. There is no contest here to decide which product is offering more to their fans. The indisputable fact is that followers of Football league teams hope that their club get drawn to play against a Premiership club in one of the cup competitions and preferably away from home too so that they experience all of the advantages offered by the Premier League as highlighted above.

In summary the Premier League offers better soccer,better facilities,bigger grounds holding more people with more intense atmospheres. One final point to consider is to look at which players are successful in the Football League and how they have got on in the Premier league. David Nugent was a big success at Preston, but could only make the substitutes bench at Portsmouth and is now on his way to Hull, a promoted Football League team. James Beattie,who made virtually no impact at Everton whilst he played in the Premiership has been an instant success when he dropped down to the Football League and played for Sheffield United.As soon as a Football League team unearth a top talent; admittedly a source of satisfaction for them, that player will be whisked off to the Premiership to keep the standards high.

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