WPL clubs in europe

Is it worth our wpl clubs entering the european competitions Bangor were thrashed 10-0 and llanelli have lost 5-0 today against tiblisi. I thought llanelli were a useful side when we played them alas it seems the wpl sides have a long way to go to match the standard of these european sides

NO it is not worth WPL teams entering European Competitions we should withdraw immediately and just stop football altogether because we are crap at it. :-) what a stupid comment the only way we will ever get better is to compete against better opposition and see how we can develop our game, it doesn't matter at what level we play sport we should always look to play at the next level up. That is what our club Merthyr Town will set out to this year, to win our league and move on to the next level and I hope that will be what we aim for every year.

But the wpl clubs do not seem to be improving their game They are spending vast sums of money on their teams and .do not have the support to warrant this.It is.. the barry town senario all over again.How can they play against better opposition in the league they are in.At least with us we can progress up the pyramyd and meet better opposition and adapt our selves to that opposition as we progress.It is only when they play in europe which is a one off on most occaisions they play any better opposition and we know what happens then.I am willing to bet that a lot of the teams in wpl will go the way of barry and rhyl in a very short time unfortunately

There is a good article by delme parfitt in the WOs which probably sums up what is being said on this topic



LOOKS like it’s time for the annual Welsh Premier League football bash then.

I’m not talking about some shindig in a low-grade hotel that’s seen better days, where men in blazers tuck into a three-course meal of watery soup, tough beef and defrosted cheesecake.

No, I mean the annual bashing of the state of our domestic football league – and Bangor’s 10-0 demise against HJK Helsinki has meant the bashers have been reaching, not for your average claw hammers, but those giant mallet things commonly used in the erection of marquees.

To get the obvious out of the way, the sheer scale of Bangor’s defeat left little wriggle room for the league’s apologists.




Farrar Road manager Neville Powell pitched it all wrong in the aftermath by trying to argue that the result was “no disgrace”.

It was. Disgrace being defined in the dictionary as the loss of respect, honour, or esteem; ignominy; shame. It was all of those, though to be fair some of the virtues mentioned above can be quickly restored in football.

Suffice to say, after going down to such an annihilation, Powell could have done with sounding a little less defiant and a bit more critical of what he and his players produced.

Yet when you actually analyse the rest of his somewhat philosophical remarks about the difference in the quality and fitness of the two teams, with the Finns playing their campaign throughout our summer, it’s difficult to argue.

Neither Llanelli nor TNS conceded a cricket score over two legs against Dinamo Tbilisi and Danish side Midtjylland respectively, and the Reds won deserved plaudits for beating the Russians 2-1 at Stebonheath Park.

That result was typical of the kind of aberration we have seen down the years, but played 168, won 22, drawn 18 is an overall record which tells its own story.

Welsh Premier clubs in Europe are akin to those heroic non-league sides who reach the third round of the FA Cup. You can almost always safely predict what’s coming, though once in a blue moon there’s a surprise.

And yet hammering Welsh Premier clubs is a pointless exercise. They are what they are – prisoners to a league which has only two full-time professional outfits in TNS and Neath.

There are countless damn good players sprinkled around the 12 clubs in the competition, there are damn good managers too.

But they can’t do more than punch their weight in their own environment unless more money is pumped into the system.

There’s no point people decrying a 10-0 result against Helsinki when they are the flagship side in Finland and subsequently packed with international players.

Granted, they aren’t Barcelona, but if anyone seriously thinks a bunch of part-timers from Wales in the middle of pre-season training should be getting the better of a side like Helsinki then they are deluded.

Sure, 10-0 is enough to stretch the patience of even the most ardent exponents of the Welsh Premier, but that result is besides the point in the grand scheme of things.

A mid-table Welsh Premier League side needs to raise £100,000 of its own accord every season just to compete. To do that they have to rely on goodwill, from benefactors willing to help out with player wages to supporters who are prepared to sell raffle tickets.

And the princely sum they get from the FAW? £5,000. In other words about enough to ensure hot water in the away dressing room for a season.

Given that they are a full-time operation, perhaps the biggest disappointment of last week was TNS slumping to an 8-3 aggregate reverse.

A 3-0 win against last season’s Conference play-off final losers Luton Town last week suggested they might do better than that – and they surely should have done. It was also interesting to note Neath, the other full-timers, beat an albeit shadow Swansea City outfit 1-0 just recently.

I do not profess to be a Welsh Premier League expert, but speaking as an interested observer I believe the competition has improved more in the past three years than it did in 15 years previously.

But when it comes to European competition its clubs are singularly ill-equipped to challenge even those who are considered minnows, be they from Scandinavia, eastern Europe or anywhere else.

In Helsinki you had internationals in the middle of their season against part-time battlers running out of puff with every passing minute.

So while we may have had a right to expect the deficit to remain beneath double figures, there was only ever going to be one outcome.

Yes it reflects badly, but nothing will change. The Welsh Premier League is what it is – small-time and part-time. Only money can change it, and there’s precious little of that