This season is seeing the three promoted teams struggle more than any previous season I can remember since I started following football in 1998. Conversely, relegated Leicester are tearing the Championship apart.
With nearly all Premier League teams owned by foreign owners and the amount of revenue the league brings in, is the gulf in quality between the two divisions growing even more do you think?
Between the top of the prem and the bottom of the championship yes.
Last seasons promoted teams are just not very good teams and they didn’t add anywhere near enough premier league quality to their sides. They were all very naive.
I said it a decade ago the tv deal killed the championship, prem clubs can get 170m to take to the championship I was spot on then and I’m still right now it’s just crazy
I actually think the gap of top of the championship and bottom of the championship is the gap that’s been increasing more. With the prem money and parachute payments that are set up, it feels like more often than not it’s the same teams that go up and come down. Have no data to back this though.
It’s a gaping chasm and the gap between the top of the Premier League and mid-table is huge.
I think so.
You can point to last season’s teams doing well though as a counter.
But my thought is that unless you have money I can’t see how any team can buy a PL player. If I think of my club Boro. We have no money, we rely on loan players heavily. If we go up the going rate for a prem league player is £30m+ now. We could not afford that no matter the increased revenue. We would go straight back down. We would need several seasons yo-yo-ing to have sustainable finances to buy the best of the championship outright and make a tilt at staying up.
A few years back you could go up, spend a total of around £30m on some smart buys and be within a fighting chance.
Looks that way unlike previous seasons
Nearly every season bar this one a promoted team stays up
When you consider the difference between finishing 20th in the PL and 1st in the Championship - so effectively one place apart, is £80m it’s hardly surprising.
And parachute payments are also now creating huge disparities in the championship, hence why EFL are trying to stop them.
Difficult to buy a trophy
Last year Fullham, Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest all came up and stayed up. One poor season from the newly promoted teams isn’t really enough to say anything.
This season seems to be a bit of an anomaly.
Sheffield United weren’t great last season yet finished 2nd and have a crap manager.
Luton are a plucky little team that play dour football (averaged one and a half goals a game last season) and, when relegated, won’t be seen again in the Premier League for a long time, if ever.
Burnley played quality football last season, but Kompany seems to think he can be a stubborn as Pep is about his style of play, without realising that he hasn’t got a billion pound squad…
One data point is not enough to say this. Last season all 3 promoted teams stayed up, were you saying then “is the gap smaller than ever?”
What about last year ? Fulham Bournemouth and forest all look comfortable in pl