Here is a word to make English Premier League traditionalists angry: play-offs.
Play-offs? That is a thing for American sports, right? Well, not really. End-of-season play-offs are now commonplace in the English Premiership rugby union, Super Rugby and pretty much every Twenty20 cricket league across the globe, as well as in the football tiers below the Premier League in England.
The concept is to maintain interest at the end of the season by pitching teams against each other, usually in knockout format, for the chance to contest a final to win the grand prize. Those traditionalists will argue why should a team that did not finish with the best record in the regular season get the chance to be crowned champions by winning a few play-off games?
England’s lower leagues use play-offs to decide a third team – those that finished the season between third and seventh – to join the top two in earning promotion. But there are plenty of fans who do not like the format. The way this Premier League season is developing, though, perhaps an end-of-season play-off might be a good idea, and keep the title race interesting.
About six weeks ago, this was shaping up to be a sensational season, with six teams capable of mounting a title challenge. Fast forward to now and Chelsea have opened up an eight-point lead at the top. They have barely put a foot wrong and the west London club look to have the title in the bag.
Antonio Conte’s side have two tough games coming up – Liverpool away and Arsenal at home – where they could be expected to drop points, but their rivals have been slipping up too often to suggest any other team could take advantage of a stutter.
If Chelsea can take points from those two games, the title race could be over with more than three months of the season still to play.
It speaks of the quality at the top of the table this season that Liverpool, in fourth, would have been top with their points tally (45) at the same stage last season. Imagine if there was an end-of-season play-off to decide the champions. Every kick would count.
Premier League officials could use a format similar to cricket’s Indian Premier League or rugby league’s Super League. The team that finish first play fourth, and second play third with the two winners meeting in the final.
Or the teams that finish first and second face off for a place in the final, and the losers get a second chance against the winners of third v fourth match.
But it would be hard to stomach for a club that finished first, if they were to lose to the team that finished say, in fourth, in a one-off game, and miss out on the chance to be crowned champions.
An alternative approach could be to use the one employed in Belgium football.
There the top six finishers in the top tier enter a mini league, where each team play each other twice. Teams start that league with half the points they earned during the regular season, so the first-placed team still hold an advantage, but it keeps more teams in with a shout of winning the title. No more losing the title on goal difference after a 38-game season, no more teams wrapping up the title with five games to go.
Change is good. As of 2026 we will have 48 countries contest the World Cup, why not experiment with the end-of-season Premier League format while we are at it.
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