Gartside's plans would be devastating for ambitious clubs like Bristol City

Question: What do you get if you render aspiration and competition redundant in professional sport? Answer: the world according to Phil Gartside.

Having come up with an appallingly bad idea a year ago, Bolton Wanderers' chairman has compounded his error by thinking of an even worse one.

Not content with suggesting Rangers and Celtic should join a new two-tier Premier League, he is now advocating there be only limited relegation from the second tier.

In effect, he is proposing a near-closed shop, with Rangers and Celtic joining the exsisting top-flight clubs and the top 18 from the Coca-Cola Championship – something which would radically alter the face of English football for generations to come.

Although his plans were rejected, for the time being, by his fellow Premier League chairmen at a meeting in London on Thursday, Gartside has nevertheless stirred up a major debate which is sure to rumble on for some time.

His motivation is to protect the ability of sides such as Bolton to compete, and to cushion the blow for those relegated to the Championship, where broadcast revenues are less than 10 per cent of those in the Premier League.

But no matter how well-meaning his proposals, they appear to threaten all that a vast majority of football fans in this country hold dear.

Like supporters of many other clubs throughout the land, Bristol City fans are invited to live the dream.

Premier League status has yet to be forthcoming, but Ashton Gate regulars, encouraged by three seasons spent in the upper reaches of the Championship, can almost taste it.

Why else do they invest so much of their time and hard-earned cash in following their favourite team if it is not to feed the hope that top-flight football is an attainable goal?

To believe so is the inalienable right of every football fan. Or so we thought.

Gartside, it seems, is all for removing that hope at a stroke. His vision for the future will involve changing a meritocracy into a franchise system overnight.

No matter how ordinary your team, how poor your management and how disaffected your support, you could never go down. In short, Bolton's leader is proposing a licence to be second-rate.

What he fails to understand is that the only reason his club is even suffered in the Premier League is because English football is based upon the potential to rise and fall. Remove relegation and competition ceases to have meaning.

City fans have been quick to voice their disapproval, many expressing fears that access to the promised land might be denied their club for the foreseeable future.

Those fears are understandable. After all, a franchise system is unlikely to involve merely pulling up the ladder after the 38th club.

Franchises are not random, they are hand-picked, the respective winners and losers selected according to strict criteria.

It seems reasonable to assume those charged with the task of determining exactly who to invite will consider attendance, tradition, finance and geography.

Who is to say Bristol City would be selected ahead of Swansea, Cardiff or Plymouth in the West? There are no guarantees.

What chance the likes of Burnley, Wigan and Hull being included in the top tier? Or, for that matter, even Bolton Wanderers?

By its very nature, a system based upon greed will inevitably cause some clubs which deserve to be included in a franchised Premier League to be squeezed out.

Take a look at Bolton's latest financial figures and Gartside's reasoning becomes abundantly clear. His football club is £62m in debt and he knows relegation to the Championship could deal a potentially disastrous blow. No wonder he wants to shut the door quickly.

He espouses the bottom line while conveniently forgetting how Bolton moved from the basement division through to the top flight in seven seasons between 1988 and 1995.

Thank goodness his latest plans have been rejected. Now let us hope that the world according to Gartside is quickly consigned to the dustbin of history.