Play Offs: Are They Really Working?

With a Christopher Schindler penalty kick after 120 minutes of play, Huddersfield secured their place in the English Premiership for the first time in their history. The West Yorkshire club, known as ‘The Terriers’, have played in the top flight of English football before, but not since 1972. Their current manager hadn’t blown out the candles of his first birthday cake when relegation came, such is the longevity of their absence.



The stories told of manager David Wagner and Chairman Dean Hoyle in the media tomorrow and the coming days will be positive and that of it being well deserved. But will it? The game itself was nothing spectacular, and certainly not one for which a casual observer would have realized the amount of money at stake for the victor. Will relegation be the prize for Huddersfield next season? I think the bookmakers will have good odds on that being the case, and that is where I find offense.

But my opposition does not come from the bookmakers or pundits who, after the champagne bubbles have burst, will most certainly have Huddersfield down as a one and done, relegation bound, side. Rather it comes from the play off procedure itself. When six of the last ten sides promoted from the Championship to the Premiership have fallen straight back down the question has to be, are we really doing what is right by our clubs? By the way, one of the four sides to survive the first season, did succumb the next, but technicalities.

By no means am I saying that the play off system should be scrapped, but maybe tweaked just a little. For example, and going across all divisions from the Championship to the non league, only Forest Green finished third on their division. That means two sides were better over the 40 plus games than them, and yet because of the one automatic place, the team finishing second gets nothing, in true Gene Wilder style.

Huddersfield themselves finished fifth and four points behind those in third in the Championship who get to do it all again next season. Further down and it is Blackpool who get to play in League One next season despite finishing seventh in their league, 7 points away from Luton who miss out.

So what is the answer? Yes I don’t mind the play offs but the statistics and current fairness of them, considering you struggle all season knowing potentially that third is just as good as sixth in your league. How can that be right? Meanwhile, clubs in the Premiership get a ‘so long and thanks for all the fish’ as no matter what, the bottom three go down. Even though they have spent a season, and probably a lot of money, in the Premier League it is see you later and don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Surely they, and other relegation bound sides, should be given a chance for another go, right?

So how about this as a solution. The playoffs still happen, but slightly differently. In the Premiership we currently have three sides relegated, but how about we just take the bottom one as automatic, with the teams in positions eighteen and nineteen heading to a play off. Hull City and Boro fans are currently for the idea while Championship fans could be poo-pooing it, but listen. In the Championship, the sides in the top two ‘current’ play off positions, also head to the play off with the winner of each, one Premier side and one Championship side playing each other to either keep their spot in the EPL or lose it to the opposition.

This season, had this format been in place, you would have seen Middlesbrough take on Hull with the losing side relegated (joining Sunderland) while the winners face off against either Reading or Sheffield Wednesday, and the winner of that plays in the Premiership. Huddersfield, who finished four points behind would already be on vacation and planning to go again next season.

For the play off to see who would play in the Championship next season, Blackburn would face off with Wigan to see who would face the winners of Scunthorpe and Fleetwood, currently in League One. Incidently these two were only separated in the table on goal difference and were both nine points above the eventual play off promoted side, Millwall.

In fact, of all the four sides promoted through the current play off system only Forest Green would even have got that shot with this format. Forest Green, in the non league did finish third and would have to play second place Tranmere in order to get that chance and that’s the beauty.

Going back to promotion into the Premiership and this system does many things. Firstly it condenses the pool of talent, why should you finish a quarter of the way down the table (essentially that’s what we have now with a side sixth out of twenty four eligible) and still have a chance to move up a league? If you were the sixth best in your current league what makes you think you can survive with the bigger fish, and that’s my point, most don’t. At least this way you have to be competitive throughout the season in order to finish high enough in the league to get the chance. Once you have done that you then have to face a side who have done similarly well in that same league and defeat them, before playing a side who have been in the league you are trying to get to. Theory is, if you don’t beat them and they struggled then are you ready?  

So, to decide which club played in which division next season this would be how it would look in the new format with this seasons positions:

Premier League:
Hull v Middlesboro
Reading v Sheffield Wednesday

Championship:
Blackburn v Wigan
Scunthorpe v Fleetwood

League One:
Port Vale v Swindon
Luton v Exeter

League Two:
Hartlepool v Leyton Orient
Tranmere v Forest Green