Championship/League 1

It IS getting harder to compete, the gap is certainly greater than it was in 1973/4 and 1989/90, the last occasions when Rovers got promoted to that level.

Mind you the gap between the Premier League and what I still regard as the 2nd Division is also greater than it was back then.

The Championship is beamed around the world too. Not as good or as popular as PL football but plenty of money in it. Calling it Football League Division 2 is not a very good sales pitch. Clubs get a bigger share of the TV money so can up players' salaries. Once the infrastructure is right there's no reason why Rovers couldn't sustain it at that level.

I'd argue that while the gap between top division and 2nd tier is clearly bigger now than it was in the parity driven 60s and 70s the immediate gap has actually gotten smaller over the last 10-15 years.  I think the money has moved down the system - partly due to expansion of TV deals and partly due to the explosion of foreign investment which means the gap has also moved down the system.  The Premier League is absurdly top heavy now.  The gap between the top 6 and the rest looks like a massive chasm but after that there's not a whole lot to pick between them.  You wouldn't have been massively shocked if any of those clubs had finished 7-20th in any particular order.  It's a lot easier for 2nd tier clubs to stay up now than it was in the early days of the Prem because there just isn't that much of a gulf anymore between what those clubs are prepared to spend.  Therefore, more often than not, promoted clubs tend to stay up which never used to be the case.  The Championship-League 1 gap (which never really used to be a big thing) now looks bigger and bigger every year though.  If you don't have the big backing then you will struggle even if you are a relatively big historic club like Bolton for example.  That should be far more of a worry for us than the Prem-2nd tier gap ever was.

One thing I note in the modern game.

We used to sell our players to top clubs.

Now, top clubs loan players to us and we buy them if unwanted.

First thing I would do is make the lower leagues what they always were - smaller clubs producing talent for sale. Limit prem youth squads to say 30 players.

Get rid on Bosman.

In all walks of life there are many movements to help the smaller business and prevent global giants dominating. Why not football?

The entire EU project is pretty much to the benefit of the big corporates. Note their stance, 90% of them, don’t want it.

It’s been tied up with some vague notion of linking arms with your brothers and the majority of people source views from newspapers and TV alone, and just nod and agree. It’s also not good for ones career in most industries to be pro Brexit. I mean, if you object to centralised state politics which nobody voted for, you’re a racist, right?

But of a rant but the sooner we are out of the EUSSR the better.

Brexot means Brexit, we leave UEFA and Eurovision Song Contest next year!