Small fish, meet big pond: Burnley

Promotion: wrestled from the jaws of bigger, better teams. Your 2009 Promotion Playoff winners. Good luck with that.

Location: Burnley, Lancashire. As the center of the cotton cloth industry in England, it's where all that slave-picked southern cotton went.

Nickname: The Clarets.

Stately, Non-Commercial Stadium Name: Turf Moor.

Crest: Not as jarbled as Wigan's old crest, but it's getting close.

What they'll bring to the table (metaphorically speaking!): As far as I can tell, they play pleasant, attacking soccer. However, there's already a billion teams from the northwest in the EPL, plus they're the third team with the claret-and-blue color scheme.

What they'll bring to the table (literally!): This could be fugly. They DID knock off several big teams in cup competitions this year but let's be reasonable. Winning more than three games Not being relegated would be a sizable achievement.

...

So, a quick summary of the end-of-season movements:


Newcastle (after 16 years in the EPL)
Middlesbrough (after 11 years)
West Bromwich (after this one, underwhelming year)



Wolverhampton (5 years gone)
Birmingham City (just one year gone)
Burnley (first time up in 33 years)


3E officially endorses Birmingham City. This will end in disappointment. But moving on, it's less than three months until next season! We'll have EPL soccer again a good two weeks before any college football.