I'd like to explain the guidelines I use concerning mergers of teams. There is a couple of scenarios to consider here. 1. The straightforward merger between two teams resulting in a completely new one. One example is Rotherham United in England. That is a merger between Rotherham County and Rotherham Town. In this case the results of Rotherham United is not counted on any of the teams forming the merger, but on Rotherham United as they are a completely new team. 2. The 2nd form is a straightforward merger resulting in a new team. But the difference from nr. 1 is that here the new club after a while takes the name of one the merging clubs. Here we have for example IFK Lule�/Lule� FF in Sweden. As long as they are called IFK Lule�/Lule� FF I count the results on them, but when they changed name to IFK Lule� I count the results on IFK Lule� instead. I follow this when there is a namechange of the merger to one of the old merging teams (as in the Lule� case) or if there is a regular split up. 3. A third form is the "swallow up"�. In this case an already existing team takes over another. In this case there is no namechange. Here I obviously count the forthcoming results on the old team as the name haven't change and a merger as such cannot be said to have taken place. 4. The fourth team is a regular namechange. This is very straightforward it might seem. But the difficulty can be to determine if there has been a namechange or a merger. 5. Yet another thing that can happen is that two teams merge and form another team. But later on (while the merged team is still in existence) one of the clubs making up the merger in the first place re-forms. 6. A sixth kind has emerged over the last couple of years in Sweden. This is when several teams (usually three or more) combine their forces into a new team. The difference between this and a straightforward merger is that here the teams concerned in the merger usually continue on at a lower level and use the new team as a spearhead. An example is the Swedish team Carlstad United BK. Why do I explain these then? Well, it is to distinguish myself from the Swedish tradition. In the alltimetables done by the Football Statistics Federation in Sweden other principles apply. There if two teams merge they count the results of the new team on the merged team playing highest in the pyramid. This is completely wrong in my opinion. A merger is a new team and that's that. Why should an old team with a better record have the upper hand in such a case?, it's ludicrous. Their principles on mergers is one of the reasons why I haven't join their organization. (The other reason is that they don't construct alltimetables for levels but for names (with some exceptions). An example is the Swedish level with the name division 3. Before 1987 this was 3rd level, 1987-2005 it was 4th level and from 2006 it will be 5th level. But the organization I mentioned have an alltimetable for division 3 that counts the series that carries the division 3 name and disregard the level in question.) For Swedish readers I can refer to the following webpage: Bolletinen An example (of many...), they count the merger of Visby IF & IF Gute as a continuation of IF Gute and not as a new team. I know that many teams that were the result of mergers, for example in England, count their roots back to the oldest of the merging teams. That may be, but they are not the same team.Comments on the contents of this page, write to my e-mail address:
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