I agree with this. AA’s put a lot of thought into it, obviously, but it’s a very elaborate answer to a fairly small problem, and delivers only marginal benefits. Plus all the disruption you described.
I think this geographical anomaly arises because teams based in the South in the top five Divisions have been more resilient and less susceptible to “downward drift” for quite a while.
NLN will be a good test for you. I think there are a fair few full time sides in there, aren’t there? And clubs like Chorley, Darlo and Chester have tons of ambition. The race for the last play-off spot this year was ridiculously tight.
One of the reasons I registered was to say that if a phoenix club is seriously under consideration you could do worse than to talk to Southend United fans via the Shrimpers Trust.
They did a fair amount of due diligence on the topic around the beginning of the year when the club regularly started missing wage deadlines.
