Opinion: Increase in promotion places into the Football League is long overdue

Chesterfield lifting last season's National League trophy.

Morecambe, come on down! Carlisle United, come on down!

Welcome to the National League (possibly, we'll find out in May), where it's just like a terraced house: two up, two down.

The 72 clubs in the National League's three divisions want to change that, and all signed a letter to the Football League board demanding as much recently.

They want a third promotion and relegation place to be introduced between the fourth and fifth tiers, which doesn't sound unreasonable.

After all, there's four of them from the third and fourth tiers.

Surely it cannot be right that there is such a disparity at the top and bottom of the same division?

Automatic promotion from the fifth tier didn't exist until 1987, while the second promotion place was only introduced in 2003.

It's already long overdue that the system was looked at again.

There are 15 former EFL clubs in the National League, and over the past decade, only eight out of the 19 teams relegated from League Two have been promoted.

Teams that earn promotion into League Two rarely seem to come straight back down. In fact, it's usually the opposite, with Stockport, Wrexham, Chesterfield, Notts County, Grimsby Town and Bromley all graduates in recent years and all at least comfortably surviving.

That suggests that the gap between the two divisions is as close as its ever been.

It's the same outdated, rather snooty attitude that has allowed the two up, two down system to remain in place for so long that has seen FA Cup replays obliterated: that those in the lower leagues are an inconvenience or an irrelevance.

Of course, the argument for EFL clubs has been seen as turkeys voting for Christmas; why would they widen the trap door beneath ther feet that's helping keep more of them where they are?

But a counter-argument to that is by retaining the current system, the escape hatch from the National League is prohibitively narrow.

The EFL say they want any changes to be part of a wider package of reforms, including greater financial support from the Premier League.

So the EFL want fairer distribution but aren't prepared to do that themselves?

But I don't see why the two have to be linked.

This issue needs addressing now. It's time the terraced house was demolished.

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