From Newsgroup: rec.sport.soccer
I'm VERY late to this, but let's have a shot at this one.
On 07/09/2025 04:50, anders t wrote:
Is it good or bad if in a league system the promoted teams almost always
get relegated directly.
In principle, I'd think it's bad. That could suggest that the gap
between divisions is a bit too wide. In such scenarios, what is the
point of pro/rel?
I mean, using a purposely exaggerated example to illustrate my point:
imagine, say, in England, direct pro/rel between the Premier League and
the National League. Would it make sense?
Does this mean that the league system has correctly stratified the teams
and that everything is in order, and all teams are at the correct level?
Or is it a sign that the league system is protectionistic, giving (unfair) advantage to the upper level teams?
In both cases, it would seem that water found its own level, whether
naturally or artificially (ie, through protectionistic actions, as you
put it). If that happened naturally, I don't know what could be done
about it. If artificially, then it could be interesting to see what
happens when you bring down the barriers.
Your questions have led me to ponder: is this "fluidity" between
divisions measurable, and how to do it?
On another note, probably related, is there a way to measure how
"diverse" a league is? "Diverse" as in, is it almost always the same old faces, or could one reasonably expect to meet newcomers time and then? I
guess one would expect less "stratified" leagues to be somehow more diverse.
I guess the data to look at, for the first concept, are the divisional movements. For example, on average, how many seasons does a promoted
team survive in the upper level? How many seasons does it take for a
relegated club to return to that division?
For the second concept, maybe the data to look at would be the
distribution of participations of each club in that division over a
specified time period.
It could be interesting to raise such data from different levels of the
same league system, and then do the same different countries for
comparison. And there may be other ways to look at this too. Some food
for thought.
Best regards,
Ll|-o
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