Post by QPR Report on Aug 21, 2009 7:53:51 GMT
Given that there's Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs...Not quite sure would completely agree!
Time Out/London - The Big Smoke
Why is London so rubbish at football?
Fri Aug 14 2009 Peter Watts
In 2005, things were looking very rosy for London football. There were six clubs in the Premier League: Chelsea and Arsenal in the top two, Charlton, Fulham and Spurs in mid-table, Crystal Palace relegated, but replaced by West Ham. The capital was buoyant.
In 1989, thing were even rosier with eight London clubs in the top flight (Chelsea not among them, although they did end the year as Second Division champions). Arsenal finished as champions.
This season, London has just five representatives. The north-west, the traditional powerhouse of English football, has eight (in 1989 it only had three – Liverpool, Everton and Man Utd), which for a region that only has 11 per cent of the country’s population is astonishing (and surely debunks the notion that London has too many clubs for its own good). The pendulum has swung.
It would be tempting to argue that this represents the beginning of the end for London football, the tipping point into a football backwater, but it’s actually a fairly accurate reflection of London’s place in football history.
And things have been worse. In 1975, London had six teams, but none finished higher than eleventh (QPR), and Chelsea and Luton were relegated. The following season just four out of 22 clubs came from London (QPR again finished highest, in second). Four from 22 was common in the '50s and '60s; it is really only the success of the smaller London clubs in the 1980s and pre-Premiership '90s – QPR, Wimbledon, Palace, Watford, Luton, Millwall all graced the top flight – that has so skewed recent figures.
In a recent article in the FT, Simon Kuper analysed why London – in keeping with Europe’s other major capitals (bar Madrid) – had failed to produce a footballing powerhouse in the manner of Liverpool, Barcelona or Bayern Munich. The answer, he says is industrialisation: ‘Almost all of Europe’s best football cities were once new industrial centres. Clubs grew bigger here than in capitals or towns with entrenched hierarchies. That’s why no team from Paris, London or Berlin has won the Champions League,’ he writes.
It’s an interesting theory. Kuper goes on to claim that ‘Paris and London, Europe’s giants, will eventually win the Champions League. Then they will dominate all aspects of life in their countries.’
It is difficult to see why that is necessarily the case – the domestic aristocracy of Manchester United and Liverpool will not be knocked over by one cockney Champions League victory. But London’s failure to dominate football in this country is perplexing.
On his More Than Mind Games blog, James Hamilton argues that the footballing success of a city is ‘the size of the city divided by the number of its significant clubs, the optimal number of clubs being two. The city has to have been a major centre of manufacturing at some point in its history, and ideally will not primarily have been a port. Discuss.’
To which Rob Marrs at Left Back in the Changing Room countered: ‘Hmmm. I’m not sure Liverpool was ever a major centre of manufacturing in the same way that Manchester was, and it was one of the largest ports in the world. Liverpudlian clubs have won the English League 27 times (Liverpool 18, Everton 9). In comparison to Manchester’s 20 (United 18 and City 2),which isn’t a port and was more a centre of manufacturing. The theory debunked, no?’ (London, by comparison, has a dismal 18 in total, 13 for Arsenal, 3 for Chelsea and 2 for Spurs.)
As far as London is concerned, I have always felt the city has suffered from a surfeit of great men, either as managers or on boards. Few London chairmen have had the vision of Henry Norris, who transplanted Arsenal to north London, tempted Herbert Chapman down from Huddersfield and turned a small club from Woolwich into the giants of the capital. Upon forming Chelsea in 1905, for instance, the directors mulled over calling their club London FC but instead settled for Chelsea; Norris would have wept at such a missed opportunity. Similarly, when Chelsea became the first English club to qualify for the European Cup in 1955 they were pressurised by the FA to decline to participate; the following season, Matt Busby bullishly ignored the FA’s exhortations and took Manchester United into Europe, establishing the club as a European giant and showing Chelsea’s decision to be as supine and short-sighted as any made in post-war English football.
So why has London lacked these great men – or at least fully exploited the handful it has produced (and a nod here must go to Bill Nicholson)? And this could bring us back to the social factors discussed by Rob and James.
Is it because football arrived late to London and never fully got under the skin of the city – crowds have been huge but never passionate? Is it because London’s most ambitious businessmen have had more options that their regional rivals, so not felt the need to sink all their wealth into something as unpredictable as a football club, no matter what boost to their profile it might provide? Or does football in London simply not – until recently – provide the sort of boost these businessmen crave? Has this lack of passion and finance, plus the competition that comes from having so many rival football clubs – not to mention other sports like rugby union and cricket – stopped great managers like Shankly or Clough from coming to London? Are these managers happier staying in the native north, where they have their roots (why they all come from the north is another question entirely) and understand the culture?
And, most interestingly, would Alex Ferguson ever have experienced the success he has in a city as big and complicated as London? Would he even have wanted to try? Could our city simply be too large, incoherent and complicated to cultivate the sort of culture required to grow a truly successful and gigantic football club?
www.timeout.com/london/big-smoke/blog/8437/why_is_london_so_rubbish_at_football.html
Time Out/London - The Big Smoke
Why is London so rubbish at football?
Fri Aug 14 2009 Peter Watts
In 2005, things were looking very rosy for London football. There were six clubs in the Premier League: Chelsea and Arsenal in the top two, Charlton, Fulham and Spurs in mid-table, Crystal Palace relegated, but replaced by West Ham. The capital was buoyant.
In 1989, thing were even rosier with eight London clubs in the top flight (Chelsea not among them, although they did end the year as Second Division champions). Arsenal finished as champions.
This season, London has just five representatives. The north-west, the traditional powerhouse of English football, has eight (in 1989 it only had three – Liverpool, Everton and Man Utd), which for a region that only has 11 per cent of the country’s population is astonishing (and surely debunks the notion that London has too many clubs for its own good). The pendulum has swung.
It would be tempting to argue that this represents the beginning of the end for London football, the tipping point into a football backwater, but it’s actually a fairly accurate reflection of London’s place in football history.
And things have been worse. In 1975, London had six teams, but none finished higher than eleventh (QPR), and Chelsea and Luton were relegated. The following season just four out of 22 clubs came from London (QPR again finished highest, in second). Four from 22 was common in the '50s and '60s; it is really only the success of the smaller London clubs in the 1980s and pre-Premiership '90s – QPR, Wimbledon, Palace, Watford, Luton, Millwall all graced the top flight – that has so skewed recent figures.
In a recent article in the FT, Simon Kuper analysed why London – in keeping with Europe’s other major capitals (bar Madrid) – had failed to produce a footballing powerhouse in the manner of Liverpool, Barcelona or Bayern Munich. The answer, he says is industrialisation: ‘Almost all of Europe’s best football cities were once new industrial centres. Clubs grew bigger here than in capitals or towns with entrenched hierarchies. That’s why no team from Paris, London or Berlin has won the Champions League,’ he writes.
It’s an interesting theory. Kuper goes on to claim that ‘Paris and London, Europe’s giants, will eventually win the Champions League. Then they will dominate all aspects of life in their countries.’
It is difficult to see why that is necessarily the case – the domestic aristocracy of Manchester United and Liverpool will not be knocked over by one cockney Champions League victory. But London’s failure to dominate football in this country is perplexing.
On his More Than Mind Games blog, James Hamilton argues that the footballing success of a city is ‘the size of the city divided by the number of its significant clubs, the optimal number of clubs being two. The city has to have been a major centre of manufacturing at some point in its history, and ideally will not primarily have been a port. Discuss.’
To which Rob Marrs at Left Back in the Changing Room countered: ‘Hmmm. I’m not sure Liverpool was ever a major centre of manufacturing in the same way that Manchester was, and it was one of the largest ports in the world. Liverpudlian clubs have won the English League 27 times (Liverpool 18, Everton 9). In comparison to Manchester’s 20 (United 18 and City 2),which isn’t a port and was more a centre of manufacturing. The theory debunked, no?’ (London, by comparison, has a dismal 18 in total, 13 for Arsenal, 3 for Chelsea and 2 for Spurs.)
As far as London is concerned, I have always felt the city has suffered from a surfeit of great men, either as managers or on boards. Few London chairmen have had the vision of Henry Norris, who transplanted Arsenal to north London, tempted Herbert Chapman down from Huddersfield and turned a small club from Woolwich into the giants of the capital. Upon forming Chelsea in 1905, for instance, the directors mulled over calling their club London FC but instead settled for Chelsea; Norris would have wept at such a missed opportunity. Similarly, when Chelsea became the first English club to qualify for the European Cup in 1955 they were pressurised by the FA to decline to participate; the following season, Matt Busby bullishly ignored the FA’s exhortations and took Manchester United into Europe, establishing the club as a European giant and showing Chelsea’s decision to be as supine and short-sighted as any made in post-war English football.
So why has London lacked these great men – or at least fully exploited the handful it has produced (and a nod here must go to Bill Nicholson)? And this could bring us back to the social factors discussed by Rob and James.
Is it because football arrived late to London and never fully got under the skin of the city – crowds have been huge but never passionate? Is it because London’s most ambitious businessmen have had more options that their regional rivals, so not felt the need to sink all their wealth into something as unpredictable as a football club, no matter what boost to their profile it might provide? Or does football in London simply not – until recently – provide the sort of boost these businessmen crave? Has this lack of passion and finance, plus the competition that comes from having so many rival football clubs – not to mention other sports like rugby union and cricket – stopped great managers like Shankly or Clough from coming to London? Are these managers happier staying in the native north, where they have their roots (why they all come from the north is another question entirely) and understand the culture?
And, most interestingly, would Alex Ferguson ever have experienced the success he has in a city as big and complicated as London? Would he even have wanted to try? Could our city simply be too large, incoherent and complicated to cultivate the sort of culture required to grow a truly successful and gigantic football club?
www.timeout.com/london/big-smoke/blog/8437/why_is_london_so_rubbish_at_football.html