Badly needed as our beloved leader Dickon Tysoe may be in his current role at leading professional insurance claims handling specialists Bankstone, it must reluctantly be admitted that – in the light of Fabio Capello’s merciful release and not-good-with-money Henry Redknap’s steadfast refusal to abandon his beloved Tottenham Hotpants – Dickon’s country must come first.
With this in view, Bankstone News would like to take this opportunity to present in summary form Mr Tysoe’s failsafe manifesto for restoring this nation’s once glorious footballing renown.
Mr Tysoe’s initial premise is both startling in its originality and dazzling in the brilliancy of its undeniable truthfulness, he claims. It is a widely accepted fact, he notes, that pretty much any premiership team (aside perhaps from those based in the North West) could see off any team of national representatives. Add to this the generally accepted fact that the Premiership is the best league in the world and, bingo, we may logically infer that the best team in the Premiership could beat any national side in the world, at a trot probably. Maybe even after a couple of beers and the odd fag.
Why allow this eloquent deduction to languish in the realms of theory? Why not, Mr Tyson argues persuasively, create a brand new top flight team established with the very purpose of booting it firmly into the international arena of footballing practice?
Obviously, this will require a few minor adjustments to the structure of English football. These will consist, Mr Tysoe explains, of relegating two sides from the Football League at the end of the current season and elevating just one from the benighted hinterlands of non-league. Meanwhile three teams will be dismissed from the Premier League* and only two promoted – a move cascaded down through the leagues – to make room in the Premiership for the newly formed (all-English league and national side combined) Three Lions FC, managed, if there is any justice at all in this world, by Mr Tysoe.
The Lions will play 19 home games at Wembley, each of which is sure to attract a capacity crowd – who would not, after all, want to see their side of over-rated foreigners pitted against England’s finest – comfortably generating £50 x 90,000 x 19 = £85m in ticket sales alone. The finest English players would naturally gravitate towards TLFC, blessed as they would be with the finest facilities and the finest coaching team (see comments regarding Mr Tysoe above) and top position in the league would be more or less guaranteed within a couple of seasons max.
Gone would be the endless arguments over players being released from club duties to play at international level. Gone too the endless moaning about them coming back hideously maimed with career ending/interrupting injuries.
To the extent that there were semi-competent English players left to play in them, other Premiership sides would be reduced to the status of feeder clubs for the national team. They probably wouldn’t mind.
In theory, qualification for the Champions League would be more or less inevitable. In practice, there might be questions over eligibility for both this and the FA and League Cups – leaving TLFC players to concentrate their energies on their league and international commitments.
You know it makes sense!
In future editions – his duties as new England coach permitting – Bankstone News will bring you Mr Tyson’s solutions to the Palestinian, Falklands, and Meaning of Life questions, as well as providing Mr Cameron with a better solution to the problem of rising motor insurance premiums than the currently proposed fixed-fees-via-portal knee-jerk reaction.
* Except in the unlikely event that one of the three bottom-placed teams turns out to be WBA, in which case 2, 1 or possibly 0 teams will be relegated from the Premier League and Mr Tysoe will come up with a slightly modified plan.
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