In April, as the wretched power grab of the European Super League clubs was leaked to the world, it caused two irreconcilable reactions. Amongst fans of the six Premier League clubs, there was outright mutiny at the shameless disregard for their own views. The ESL was not merely an administrative shift; it changed the game and threatened the fabric of their support.
That rage was reciprocated elsewhere, across the game and outside the boundaries of sport. Supporters of other clubs protested against the abject greed that had been allowed to run free. Leeds United reminded Liverpool that “football was for the fans” on t-shirts left in the away dressing room at Elland Road.
Politicians – some dancing hand-in-hand with irony – criticised clubs for looking after themselves rather than their public. It became a moment of unity for English football, a climbdown forced by community action.
But beneath that, a different minority opinion existed. Speaking to supporters of West Ham and Newcastle United, many expressed a desire not to block the six breakaway clubs from their ring-fenced fiefdom but to slam the door on them on their way out. To them, the Premier League should be a home for clubs who want to thrive in it rather than plot ways to escape it.
Newcastle are an apposite example here. Away fans who have travelled to the Etihad for their club’s last eight away league games against Manchester City have seen their team lose all eight matches, scoring three times and conceding 31 goals. They stopped making that 280-mile round trip through hope a long time ago. Effective competition is replaced by a game within the game: how many can Manchester City score and how many can Newcastle avoid conceding?
Competition in the Premier League has decreased significantly over the last 20 years. Since 2003, only seven different clubs have finished in the top four. That compares unfavourably to La Liga (11 different clubs) and the Bundesliga (13). Those divisions have their issues with monopoly (Bundesliga) and duopoly (La Liga), but competitiveness began nearer the top of their divisions than in England.
Those seven clubs: the ‘Big Six’ and Leicester City. That phrase may have lost some cultural relevance with the decline of first Arsenal and now Tottenham, but it stacks up in financial terms. According to Deloitte’s latest Football Money League, the lowest annual revenue of the Big Six (Arsenal at £388m) is still £176m higher than the next Premier League club on that list (Everton on £212m).
As for Leicester, they play a complicated role in this story. In isolation, their title triumph in 2015-16 offered oxygen to every supporter of a non-elite club that their dreams were not hopelessly naive, destined to be left desolate on the green turf of the Etihad, Old Trafford and Stamford Bridge.
We’d always been told that anyone could beat anyone in a one-off match but had long given up hope that that theory could persist over the course of an entire season. But in the aftermath of Leicester’s title celebrations, the Premier League’s elite vowed that English football’s great miracle could not be repeated. It provoked a period of rapid investment.
In 2016-17 and 2017-18 alone, Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and Manchester City spent approximately £1.4bn on transfer fees. Cause and effect in action: In 2016-17, the Big Six took 2.36 points per game against the rest. This was the highest figure ever for the top six clubs in England.
Since 2016-17, those six more familiar names in the top four have become four. Arsenal suffered from the uncertainty caused by the loss of a dynastical manager and the mismanagement that had set in during his latter years and have continued since.
Tottenham enjoyed a period of overachievement that proved to be unsustainable. In the last two years, Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City have finished in the top four places in both seasons. This season, the longest odds available on any of those clubs making the top four is 1-4 for Manchester United. After five games, it is considered to be virtually watertight.
Again that correlates with financial information. The gap between the Big Six and the rest still exists – as detailed above – but there is a growing chasm within that group. Manchester City’s last recorded annual income – third in the Premier League’s revenue table – was £161m higher than Arsenal’s in fifth, almost as big as the gap between Arsenal and Everton.
Last season, the most unusual campaign in league history given the lack of crowds, impacts of Covid-19 and a relentless schedule for those competing in Europe, became defined by a series of freak results: Aston Villa 7-2 Liverpool, Chelsea 2-5 West Brom, Manchester United 1-2 Sheffield United, Manchester City 2-5 Leicester City.
But what difference did it make? The same four clubs still finished in the same four positions. So far this season, they have played 14 matches against non-Big Six opponents: 12 wins, two draws, 36 goals scored, four conceded.
This lack of competition gets under your skin and changes your behaviour. Watching live, you become hardwired to source your enjoyment not from the potential for a contest, but the individual elements within it: Mohamed Salah’s brilliance, Manchester City’s attacking triangles, Manchester United threatening farce but their individual brilliance finding a way to render any deficiencies meaningless. All the while we persuade ourselves that we always used to view matches this way.
This decline in competition is not exclusive to England. Juventus had long been dominant in Serie A, although that crown has slipped. Bayern Munich are on a run of nine straight Bundesliga titles and have scored 20 goals in their first five league games of the season.
Barcelona have been pushed close to the edge by their own mismanagement, but La Liga has still had the same top three (in various combinations) since 2011/12. The exceptions come only when self-inflicted crises occur. Broadcasting deals, sponsorship potential, revenue streams, global marketing pull; all are weighted towards the elite.
There is no good news here, no likely salvation. The rich will get richer and the rest will desperately attempt to keep pushing water up the hill. The financial impact of Covid-19 will affect every club, but some enjoy the warmth of several comfort blankets. Competition will be eroded further, with exceptions only likely to arise in the case of multi-billionaire benefactorship or state ownership.
Without competition, a league loses its edge. Supporters wonder if there’s any point going to “big club” away days to see how many they will lose by. Neutrals may be able to switch focus from contests to the exceptional talent hoovered up by the financial elite, but not everyone is a neutral.
You can see the point of those who were happy to see the “Breakaway Six” leave. The nightmarish vision of a Super League is far less scary when one already exists in your team’s division.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3EI0IKQ
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