Breaking the Law: relegate any football team who cannot gain a point per game
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There will be teams that survive this season not because of any real achievement or excellence of their own, or even that they have reached the heights of mediocrity, but simply that there are three teams even worse than them. And, frankly, that’s no way to live.
Obviously there isn’t an enormous amount that football can do about this but there is one thing. At present, as you may have spotted, the bottom three teams in the Premier League are relegated at the end of the season and the rest are fine, regardless of their points total. They get to call themselves members of The Best League In The World™ without having done a huge amount to deserve it. Should this be the case? Should the Premier League not be comprised of the teams that have showed they belong, rather than just those who are a bit better than the very worst?
One way of improving the level of competition would be to impose a minimum level of competence – a base points total on the teams in the top division, as a basic level of quality. Any number one picks from the air will be relatively arbitrary but a point per game is a little less arbitrary than anything else. So, if any team fails to gain 38 points in the Premier League season, then they should be relegated. That seems to be a fair level of basic competence because if a team cannot muster a point a game, then it’s tough to argue that they ‘belong’ and are good enough to compete with the rest of the division.
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