I think the extra game is a graet idea. If you can afford to go great if not watch it on the TV. I seriously can't see what the problem is? It add a some spice at a crap time of year.

God my english is rubbish. It will add some spice at a crap time of year is what i was trying to say.

if it doesnt happen you get to travel to 38 games, if it does and you dont go you still get to see 38 games, so i dont agree with some views (especially talksports) that real fans miss out

however i agree that it cant be fair, villa will no doubt draw man utd every year, and a relegation threatened team will get arsenal, whilst another will get the next derby

plus i think that despite the prem being the best league, we are kidding ourselves if we think every game will be a success - wigan cant sell out the jjb, they wont sell out giants stadium

jinksy

they're proposing january. maybe a crap time of year but we've just played 5 games in january after playing 6 in december

this is only been done to make money - not for the game or the supporters or anyone else - only to make money and it really isn't right

This is such a bad bad idea, greedy premier league, the teams already are exhausted after a grueling Christmas period without having to hop on a plane (more than likely to the states) suffer jet lag and then be affected when they come back. The premier league needs to get its head out of its arse on this one but I fear this is already a done deal.

I don't understand how we can have 1 extra game per season, abroad or otherwise.

It means we'd have to play 1 team on neutral turf. That means playing 1 team 3 times during a season, but playing all the other teams twice. How can that be fair?

For our league standing, that might be OK if we were playing Derby, but it would be a a bit unfair if we had to play Man U again in our extra game. If we missed out on 4th spot in 2011 by one point because we lost our third league game against Man U and Liverpool won their third game against newly promoted Preston, I'd be quite pissed off as we'd had a harder fixture list than Liverpool. It would be completely unfair.

If they promoted an extra club to fill the void, surely we'd have to play 2 extra games per season - it would be equally unfair to play all teams twice except for 1 team that we'd only play once.

I just don't see how it would work unless it didn't count as a league game (in which case, what's the point?!). Am I missing something?

PaulE - you're not missing something

and like i said, i dont think its fair - but i do see this happening. maybe not this time, but some time in the future

its a bit like that film, the original one, rollerball - only a few global teams owned by huge companies - playing all over the world

I think its a very exciting idea, Villa playing in HongKong, Beijing, Dubai, fantastic, hopefully we'll have some top players and competing in the Champions League, remember the 5 year plan??

Well, its frankly unfair. Unless they come up with some sort of system that prevents bigger clubs playing each other, it will be unfair... all they see is money, money, money... Man Utd vs Liverpool, if held in Malaysia would get a sell out garunteed from what I've seen in the country. Same with most of Asia...

The only good thing is if we play and do win a big game... it expands our fanbase :)

thats the other thing that the prem doesnt seem to realise - if every prem club increases its income by 10% then the gap between the prem and the fizzy pop leagues will become too great and the prem could end up having to become an elitist league NFL style because no promoted club would survive

It will never happen. It would cause too much trouble if it caused a team to win the league/ be relegated because of favouravble draw in this game. Is that not the whole point of the league format? Every team plays each team at home and away that way everyone has the same advantage. Its a stupid idea which has'nt been thought through properly.

i agree with what brett said, it will be unfair that someone will have to play man u or arsenal 3times, and another team will get to play derby or blues 3 times. maybe if top played bottom, 2nd played 19th it will be a bit better.

but the games will lack atmosphere n passion from the croud, i like ac milan and celtic but if they ever came to england n played a match, if i went i wouldnt be up for it as much as a villa game.

and also u already get arsene wenger moaning that theres already to many games in a season, i wonder what his view will be on this?

I think we should all lighten up abit. If you believe it's going to happen anyway, lets look at the positives rather than the negatives. Does the thought of 5 back to back matches on both a Sat and Sun not excite anyone? How about Villa drawing Man U or Arsenal and actually beating them? I remember us beating Chelsea earlier this season.

I think there's major flaws in this proposal aswell that need to be ironed out (what if Villa draw Blues for example) but I think over time the mood will slowly change. Roll on 2011......

mickey 86 i hate to disagree but i dont think it will be fair to make top play bottom, 2nd play 19th, etc becasue if it was done now then arsenal would play derby and united would play fulham. However, west ham would be playing tottenham and that is surely unfair on west ham and tottenham as they have a very hard game whilst united and arsenal pretty much get a banker. if anything, it should b3 1st v 11th, 2nd v 12th, 3rd v 13th, etc as that would mean the difference between the quality of teams for every1 is the same, according to league form. i.e. everyone is playing an equally good/bad team, if u see what im saying. however, thats not saying i agree with the idea, i still dont think it should be done

What if they dropped the number of teams in the premier league to 19 or 18 after next season? Would that help or am I not thinking that through?

bosko i agree with what you are saying about a weekend of football being amazing - despite the fact that some of the games will be on at stupid o'clock in the morning
and yes the villa chelsea game was great (home and away, same with spurs) but remember the villa vs derby game? it was dire, and not exactly an advert for the prem - would you be happy travelling to tokyo to watch that?

if you lived out there would you want to pay a weeks wages to see robbie savage and titus bramble!?! although saying that, could be quite entertaining to watch titus bramble fuck everything up!!

lets not forget - this isn't about aston villa supporters who go to away games or villa park

sure - they'll be club travel arranged - but it will be bloody expensive and for a weekend in saudi arabia or tokyo or cleveland - you might as well arrange it yourslef and go for a week or two

this isn't about the supporters at home - this is about generating money by filling stadiums from overseas

Brett, I take your point on board about the Derby game but I suppose that'll just be the luck of the draw.

I just think, hey ho, get on with it and if we draw one of the top teams give it a go and if we draw Derby (or an equivalent) happy days. Remember this isn't going to be a one season thing, it'll happen every year, so you're going to get a good draw at some point....I hope!

i dont think we should get to stuck up on the 'one match' because it could quite as easily then be turned around to 'okay we wont play one more match - we'll pick one of your existing matches'

then they'll say we've fixed your concerns - lets do it

for me, it's about the game. it's already out of control. allowing this to happen will just take it further out of control

but it will happen - because of the money - eventually

if the club is making so much money do you think the clubs should be made to subsidise season ticket holders travel costs? not fully but a certain % of flight costs come from the club

Typical greed from the most over rated, over priced and over hyped league in the world. If they wanna do something positive however how about having a two tier premiership with 16 teams in each to actually reduce the number of games then have your so called foreign games in some kind of knock out format 4 groups of 4 or something.

After thinking this through a bit I can't see any possible way you could do this and make it fair. The one I thought would effect the league the least would be 1st v 20th etc. though as was pointed out this would give Man U and Arsenal an almost certain win. Maybe 1st v 2nd, 3rd v 4th would work but who would get excited about Fulham playing Derby?

As someone pointed out on the BBC forums I think it would be great if they could use the Carling Cup for this format, unfortunately this isn't going to happen as the people behind this are only associated with the Prem. Maybe if they scrap the Carling Cup for PL teams and have a Premier League cup or something like that.

At Oscars Arse:

Better still we could just reduce the size of the premiership by a couple of teams, I think it's been long overdue a reduction in size. Doesn't anyone agree?

the cup format does make more sense - make the peace cup bigger - 5 cities, 4 teams at each, a knock out tournament pre season followed by a final between between the winning 4 teams at a 6th city mid season

SELL DEVIL SOUL

All I know is id be wrapped if any combination of premiership teams played a game in Aus let alone AV.

Don't see how getting more money in is a bad thing either?

as a villa fan in states, I welcome the opportunity to connect with the club such as the friendly against the Columbus Crew. I do question the impact the 39th game has on the competitive integrity but a schedule formula such as 1v20, 2v19, 3v18 etc from the previous season could help keep it equitable. as far as greed is concerned, i toss out a $100 dollars/yr to get the games on TV and broadband at awful hours in the morning, so that ship has already sailed.

being a football fan is an emotive business. evidently it's extremely difficult for some fans to understand that football cannot operate in it's own bubble, exclusive of how the rest of the world operates these days.

just for a moment take your head out your arses and think about where the professional game in england would be right now if everything had remained the same as back in the 60's and 70's, while the rest of the world game progressed to where it is today.

the premier league is greedy?? oh please, what a typically negative use of words. how about ambitious?? i imagine there were a lot of negative views about the formation of the premiership... would you prefer we currently operated in the old first division format while competing with the french, spanish and italian leagues in the global market??

at villafandan
[quote]would you prefer we currently operated in the old first division format while competing with the french, spanish and italian leagues in the global market??[/quote]
no i wouldn't - i'm actually more than happy the way it is right now - not playing games in tokyo, america, saudi arabia

also, the french, spanish and italian leagues are not suggesting that they're going to travel all over the world - so why do we need to pioneer it?

as for challenging teams from those leagues, i think we've actually done okay the last few seasons against them in the chumps league - so why go and make it worse

just because its a new idea - doesn't mean its a good idea and there are so many things the premier league could be doing to make the existing league better before trying to add yet something else which makes it a bit more of a joke

if you think the premier league isn't greedy and if you think this isn't just about the money - then i'm afraid you are in the minority

Football as I know it is almost dead.

Hopefully next season we'll sign a complete new team of superstars, play all our home games in the capital cities of the world, Villa Park will be used as a 'villa fan drilling zone' where foreigners will learn to sing songs in a brummie accent. MON will however retain Petrov and Reo-Coker to keep the fans happy they'll be better on motorbikes - see Damian's rollerball post)

What upsets me is it completely unbalances the season. Any team, I don't care who, is at a complete disadvantage to be playing any of the top 6 teams. If you don't agree, picture this. Is it more likely to get 3 points off a team like Man U or Derby? Now put it in context. You get to play an extra game versus Man U, which you lose as always, while the team that beats you to Europe at the end of the season got to play Derby.

If you think it's fair, your trying to tell me that all teams are completely equal in the prem. No team is better than any other team. Wrong

Completely unfair.

As a long suffering Villa fan in Australia, I enjoy a journey every two years to Birmingham to see as many games as I possibly can in 4 weeks (my wife is English but I'm an Aussie, I strangely selected Villa as a result of Mark Bosnich!)

I would love to have a Premier League here every year, but I know that compromised draws don't work. In Australian football the season has always been 22 games, irrespective of the number of teams, so now that there are 16 teams, you play each team once, then 7 teams a second time, with the league deciding who you play and where. What the? YES, thats how they do it.

If you were going to play games abroad, I think the club should have the option of doing it themselves rather than being obligated.

If the club want to short change their local fans for bigger international shirt sales, then that is up to them. Longer term though, they will either be playing all their games to empty stadiums (or partials filled with international blow-ins), or all their games abroad.

wow damian, way to miss the point. how can you be happy with where the premier league has progressed to now without accepting the development over the last 12-15 years that got us here was motivated through what you call greed and i call ambition?? it's just semantics.

if you can't understand this basic premise then it doesn't surprise me that you also fail to grasp where the premier league will be in another decade or so if we don't "pioneer" ahead with ideas like this.

it might be a cliche, but if you stand still you get left behind. give it some more thought. think about where the english top flight league would be now if it had remained the same as 15 years ago. would you have seen some of the world's best players grace our shores?? would you have seen the best english talent ply their trade in england or overseas?? would the coefficients qualify our top league for 4 champ's league spots?? would the english teams in europe be competitive?? would the TV money be there??

the answer to all these questions is, of course, no. it's simple and obvious. the top english league would be a sherpa vans equivalent within europe if we hadn't "pioneered" ahead with new ideas. it follows that's exactly what we'll be in another 15 years if we rest on our laurels now.

but villafandan

we didn't pioneer anything with the premier league. we just did it a little differently to the italians and spanish - we've not invented anything here - only contained it

but to go back to your first post and just to disagree a little more with what you said, when the premier league was formed i think most were actually for it - because they could understand and see the benefits of containing things in one place for the bigger clubs - but what the premier league are now proposing is completely different

this is just the first step. sure they'll say it's only 1 game a season - but in 10 years it will be 3 and in 20 it will be 10.

you've also, to use one of your phrases now, got to get your head out of your arse. this is only a league. when did the actual league become bigger than the game?

villafandan - there is more money in the premier league than italy, france and spain put together - i'm not complaining about where the premier league is now - i'm actually suggesting that there are things that they could be doing to make it better at home rather than thinking about things only to make more money - and if you think this is about anything other than money or brand then you are clearly deluded

it should be about the football and doing this would not be about the football

when people like platini call this idea a 'joke' and the vast majority of people think this is wrong, i really don't think it's me thats missed the point

i dont want to sound rude - but do you actually understand what it is they're suggesting?

lol, don't worry damian - it's not rude, but thanks, i think i've a pretty decent grasp of what's being suggested. in fairness though, i think i'm guilty of misreading the tone of your original post.

there's two issues here; the playing of competitive EPL games overseas and the addition of extra fixtures. perhaps i'm assuming too much, but i got the impression you were equally against both.

i perhaps should have made myself clearer - i fully support the playing of competitive games overseas and all the reasons i've given thus far stand.

however, i'm not in favour of adding fixtures as there's absolutely no way this can be fair. i didn't get hung up on this as it's only an idea right now and i don't see it going forward in this format.

the point i've tried to illustrate is that the creation of the premiership was radical, money motivated and not without it's critics. we can agree, i think, as villa fans at least, that we're better off after 15 years of the EPL than we would have been if we still had the old first division.

you might not think forming the EPL was that big a deal, i couldn't disagree more. it was huge, it's the biggest thing to ever happen to football in england, possibly even the world.

and while i don't think playing abroad is quite as ground braking, it's still a huge turning point in our game. it's one that i think in another 15 years will have had an overall positive effect.

yes it's about money, but isn't that what we need to succeed?? if you really think that "it should be about the football and doing this would not be about the football" is relevant in 2008 then we'll never agree on anything. my suggestion would be to find a nice team in the sherpa vans league and perhaps put your hard earned cash into them.

Football has always been ruled by money that hasn't changed because of the premiership. What has changed is the popularity of the game and in particular the English game. Families, women all go to matches now when they hadn't used to. I can understand the premier league wanting to cash in but I am not so sure it will happen. There are other vested interests just as powerful as the premier league, FIFA for example and they have the power to block this. Also some countries will not want the premier league to take over their own domestic leagues for a weekend. The USA have already said they would have doubts and so have Austrailia others will follow. I am sure something will happen but the current proposal has not been thought through at all.