On 10 February, Southampton trailed 2-0 at half-time in their Championship home fixture against Huddersfield Town and Russell Martin knew that he needed to change something, ideally several things.
Martin had already brought on Joe Rothwell after 33 minutes, and continued in the same vein thereafter: David Brooks, Samuel Edozie, Kamaldeen Sulemana, Sekou Mara. Those players provided four goals and three assists and Southampton won the game 5-3.
Brooks and Rothwell were January loan signings from Premier League Bournemouth. Their wages will be considerable. The other three were signed for combined transfer fees of around £35m last season. And these were Southampton’s Plan B players in the second tier. Huddersfield’s five substitutes: three academy graduates and two players signed for less than a million pounds combined. This wasn’t a Championship fixture; it was two in one.
This has been a season like no other in which to assess the financial disparity between English football’s mini-tiers. The Premier League’s bottom three are, currently, the three promoted clubs, potentially the first time since 1998 that all three immediately go back down.
One saving grace may be the points deduction handed down to Everton – and another could follow for Nottingham Forest – two clubs who overreached in the vain hope of matching the financial elite.
In the Championship, three of the top four are the relegated clubs. Leicester have found life supremely easy after relegation and hold a nine-point lead with 13 games left.
Leeds and Southampton both wobbled at the season’s start under new managers, but have enjoyed extended unbeaten runs. For the first time ever, it may well be the same three coming down and the same three going up.
There are theories, reasons to explain this away as a freak. Sheffield United came up with ownership uncertainty. Burnley had a dogmatic tactical philosophy that got found out. Leicester’s team was never a relegation candidate on paper.
Southampton and Leeds paid the price for a series of bad decisions and the Championship permitted a period of spring cleaning and introspection. Ipswich have been a glorious exception and may yet crash the parachute payment party. We should wish them well, as an antidote to the status quo if nothing else.
Now take several steps backward to take in the full panorama. Effective competition in the Premier League and Championship is struggling to exist as a concept.
Promoted clubs (who have been in the EFL for the previous two years) are permitted to record three-year losses of £61m, £44m lower than existing Premier League clubs, despite missing out on the same broadcasting riches. They begin the race from behind the start line. Increasingly, some are choosing to bank the money rather than gambling on survival in a league weighted against them and you can’t blame them.
In the Championship, the imbalance is just as stark. More than the depth of first-team squads and transfer activity, it is wage bills that accurately predict performance. Football finance site Capology estimates that Leicester’s wage bill for this season is around £60m with Southampton and Leeds around £40m.
Not only are they the top three in the division by a distance, those estimates would make Leicester’s wage bill at least four times higher than 17 other clubs in the division. Parachute payments were intended to create a soft landing. They’re now acting like a trampoline.
How do other clubs cope? They mostly don’t. We can cherish the honourable exceptions, the Luton Town of last year and the Ipswich Town of this, but they are increasingly rare. Between 2010 and 2019, eight clubs bounced back to the Premier League within two years. Since the new TV began in 2019-20, six clubs have already done exactly that and six may become nine before the end of May.
Were this simply a case of replacement, the only issue would be the erosion of competition: the same select clubs, relying upon parachute payments, go up and the same clubs eventually return from whence they came; rinse and repeat. But it’s the by-product of that cycle that is most damaging: wanton desperation.
In the Premier League, clubs feel the heat and so invest heavily to try and avoid relegation back to the financial apocalypse.
Nottingham Forest have bought 40-odd players since promotion, Bournemouth spent £120m last summer, Burnley have signed 19 players since promotion at a cost of over £100m and Farhad Moshiri spent £400m trying to shift Everton away from their mediocrity. What’s the alternative, accept your fate and succumb?
In the Championship, desperation culture rules all. Parachute payments allow those relegated to retain deep squads and the rest of the division urges to keep up with the Joneses.
For the last five years in a row, Championship clubs have spent more on wages alone than they make in revenue. Not only are they pitted against the parachute payment tide, they’re actually trying to fight it because to avoid doing so is to be accused of a lack of ambition. Every now and then one comes close to popping. West Brom have just got new owners and just as well too.
The same three clubs going up and the same three clubs going down, if it happens, would be a line in the sand. We need greater redistribution of wealth. We need effective competition to be enforced. We need clubs at the lower end of the Championship to believe that the Premier League is a dream that doesn’t rely upon risking the club’s entire future.
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