LINCOLN CITY boss Danny Cowley believes the competitive National League should be given another promotion spot.
Non-League‘s top tier currently only has one automatic promotion slot for the champions with teams finishing second to fifth entering the play-offs.
It means just two of the 24 competing teams will win promotion at the end of the season while four go up from League Two.
Calls for a third promotion spot for Non-League are not new, but may be brought back into the spotlight following the collapse of the Football League’s ‘Whole Game Solution’ plans.
They proposed another division below League Two and above the National League from 2019-20 which would have featured 20 teams.
A raft of National League clubs would have been cherry-picked to make up the numbers in League Three but the plans were shelved yesterday following a lack of support from the FA.
With the controversial ‘solution’ now off the table, Cowley reckons the strength on Non-League’s top tier means another promotion spot is needed.
“There are a lot of good teams in this league, it’s such a tough division,” Cowley told Lincolnshire Live.
“You’ve only got to look at the FA Cup to see how strong this league is. Teams in our league have gone to Football League clubs and have beaten them.
“The division above has four promotion places so one in every six teams will be successful, while in this league it’s one in 12.
“So I think so [there should be another promotion place]. In any division that’s got 24 teams, there should be more than two places. And I don’t just think that about the National League, but for the divisions below as well. I think that for many reasons.
“You want to keep the league exciting. League Two is great because going into the last month of the season you could still have 12 teams fighting for promotion, whether automatic or via the play-offs.
“So I’m all for it, in any league, but I can’t see the clubs in the Football League agreeing to it.”
