No matter who wins this afternoon’s little matchup in North London, it’s going to be a massive struggle for them to stay in the Premier League next season. The last six clubs promoted to the top flight have come straight back down, and between them, scored a record number of points. And not a record number in a good way.
Why is this? Well, the gulf between the two leagues has always been opening up, but it seems that soon after Covid, it widened into a chasm of epic proportions. And if you were in there when this happened, you now seem to have some sort of protection against relegation.
So suddenly, you have the likes of Bournemouth, Fulham, Brentford and Brighton battling it out for European places. And no offence to those clubs, but they’re not exactly historically the biggest teams. But they were in the mix when it counted and now they are the new biggest teams.
Of course, 95% of it comes down to money. Plucky performances and passionate support can only do so much. And how on earth are Championship cubs meant to compete when there’s this level of financial disparity?
When you don’t have European football, and when you don’t have an assured place in the Premier League, you simply can’t attract big players. And the double whammy is that the opposition can.
And thanks to English teams performing way above the average in the European competitions this year, there could be as many as 10 of the 17 existing teams in the Premier League playing in Europe next year. Six of them will be in the top tier on the chart below, another four in that second tier.
There’s a lot of money splashing around for the other clubs when you aren’t in those top two bands.
Spurs and ManU might have had absolutely awful seasons this time around, but they were still miles clear of the relegation places. There’s just no competition anymore when it comes to going down. And while that might be a very comfortable position for the established clubs, it will slowly(?) kill the league.
Of course, I hope we go up this afternoon. We have played brilliantly all season and we deserve to celebrate with something to show for it. But at the back of my mind (and those of dirty l**ds and Burnley fans, if they’re being honest), is the tinge of realism that next season will be a hard watch.
Still… let’s deal with that if and when we have to.
COME ON YOU RED AND WHITE WIZZZZZAAAAARDS!
EDIT: OK, a few days later now and that didn’t go well.
But I have just spotted this:
Which does kind of prove the point.