Championship play-offs could be expanded as EFL consider ‘eliminator’ shake-up
The English Football League is considering adding an eliminator round to the Championship play-offs with six teams taking part.
The move would see the Championship adopt a similar format to that of the National League.
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That would mean the team finishing fifth would play the eight-placed team and sixth taking on seventh in one-off matches with the highest placed team based on league position playing at home.
The proposal was put to clubs at a meeting last week by Preston North End chairman Peter Ridsdale where it was viewed that the change would add more jeopardy to the back end of the season.
According to The Athletic, the feedback from Championship clubs has so far been positive despite being at an early stage.
There is also interest in rolling out the proposed changes across League’s One and Two but for now, only Championship clubs have been consulted.
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Football Association rules say changes to competition formats must firstly be approved by the FA board and the Premier League.
The idea is not a new one, as former Crystal Palace and Bristol City chief executive Phil Alexander, the interim chief of the National League, has proposed it several times in the past without success.
Discussing the proposed switch, former Palace chairman Simon Jordan told talkSPORT that the idea is built primarily on the financial benefits that it will bring.
He said: “Is the play-off system currently broken? Do we not appreciate it? Why would it only be done in the Championship?
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“It’s more money and one of the main reasons I don’t like it is if you look at who finished eighth over the last three seasons is Millwall and we can’t give those horrors the chance of running around in the Premier League, can we?”
“Who defined that sixth deserved sporting merit, you could have just had third and fourth,” he added.
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“We’ve got a situation where it looks like it is expanding the jeopardy of the league to make more meaningful games at the end of the season.
“If you look at the MLS there are more teams who participate who have the chance of getting into the play-offs as there are more games that enable them to do that at the back end of the season. There are more teams that are there.
“If you have more teams that could potentially be in the play-offs, up to eighth, then you have more games at the back end of the season people will want to attend.
“You’ve created another tier of play-off games which means more revenue for teams that finish seventh and eighth, so it’s a money play.
“The difference between fifth and sixth and seventh and eighth is sometimes a point so there’s not much attainment value in it, but what it is another game and when you possibly get to games 44, 45 and 46 you might have X amount of teams that are still in that space that can get eighth.
“You could get more jeopardy."