Apologies if I state the bleedin obvious, but…
Take a little longer than usual to run you eye over the Premier League table – albeit still with that one game to go – and you can’t help but feel that it is becoming ever more dysfunctional.
It’s the gap between Liverpool in seventh and West Bromwich Albion in eighth that ought to set the alarm bells ringing somewhere – but won’t.
Ten points separate the two teams and with the Baggies looking as if they were firmly on the beach last weekend and playing host to Manchester United this weekend – as Liverpool entertain long-doomed QPR – so you can’t help but wonder whether that margin might not be 12 points before the season ends.
There is also, of course, the small matter of that United game being Sir Alex’s final one in charge; I can’t see anyone denying him one final victory. So let’s work on that basis – that the 2012-2013 Premier League season will end with a dozen points between the top seven teams and the rest.
That is a huge gap between the have-a-lots and the have-utter-buckets – the only exception to the ‘rule’ as such being the continuing magnificent efforts of Everton; to be in that top seven on the shoe-string finances available at Goodison is one of the reasons that David Moyes won’t be at Goodison next season.
And why – in many a likelihood – minus his influence, the gap next year will be between the top six clubs and the other 14.
Who realistically is going to find another four or five wins in their locker to bridge that gap? Given that the top six will be ever more richer next season than they were this.
Are Newcastle the club that, by rights, should be in that top echelon? Really?
I think the summer could prove long and uncomfortable for Alan Pardew.
But of the rest, who can bridge the gap?
And it is an important question – because it ensures that the 14-strong mini-league come 2013-14 will be just as ugly, just as desperate and just as unappealing as it was, by and large, this.
The stand out games tend to be those against the top six or seven clubs; invariably they end in defeat – every once in a while, however, a beauty emerges from the beastliness of the rest. Something that you can actually describe as entertainment.
But, for me, that’s the challenge facing the Premier League – if they really care about levelling the playing field up and hoping for rather more entertaining fare to serve up to its global customer base something needs to change.
So, with that in mind, here’s a thought.
I’ve always thought that the American draft pick system was a good idea. In that the teams that finished bottom of any division got first dibs when it came to picking the best the colleges had to offer.
With a wage cap also in place, it tends to keep the playing field rather more level than it is here. The talent is spread out. It is the same thought process that gets the pace car out on their oval racing circuits – to bunch the cars back up again to make it more entertaining for the paying punters.
On the basis that there are too many entrenched interests to agree to a wage cap in the Premier League, how about divvying up the positional prize money in reverse order?
Those clubs at the top of the table are already picking up their prize bonuses in the shape of Champions League revenue, so why not give the club that finishes 20th the most money and then slide the scale down incrementally to the club that finishes first – who, in the case of either Manchester club, need more money the least?
You could, therefore, do away with the ‘parachute payments’ for falling into the depths of The Championship; instead give the club that finished 20th the means to re-finance themselves off a reversed positional prize pot.
Relegation in itself will keep things incentivised in terms of doing your best to avoid the drop; but this way people can at least hope for one summer in which maybe – just maybe – the playing field can be levelled a little way.
Keep things as they are and the slog that was the back half of this season – one that was repeated across the country, no doubt – will become ever more gruelling in terms of entertainment.
No-one takes risks; everyone just fixates on that 40-point mark and does whatever it takes to scramble across the finishing line. Job done for another campaign.
But is that as good as it’s going to get for anyone south of 6th?
Something needs to change. Just don’t hold your breath, that’s all…
If the prize money ever changed then you could bank on the big teams sorting their own European league within two years. I wouldn’t blame them either, winners should get more its not fair to reward failure just to make a more level playing field.
It’s a good argument but surely teams would then be happier to finish 17th then say 13th or 14th?
What an unusually ridiculous argument. Firstly, once survival is assured, clubs will make no effort in the remaining games, field weakened sides, and totally go against the intention of making final games competitive. Also, just suppose two teams are fighting to survive on the final day. One is playing a team with an outside chance of a European spot, and the other is playing a team safely ensconced in 14th. It is obvious that a team could throw a game if there’s a financial gain in losing.
Secondly there is no way of implementing a draft system akin to the NFL etc. That works well in a franchised system with no relegation, and even then purely because of a college system that is just as fervently supported as the pro game. What would our equivalent be? Picking young kids and potentially relocating them all over the country? From what age? Flawed as it may be, the academy system that encourages local talent is the best option available.
Financial clout doesn’t guarantee success (QPR) but with prudent management and sensible budgeting, success is possible. I for one would hate our recent meteoric rise to be checked by penalising us and redistributing our hard-earned spoils to Portsmouth, just for equality’s sake.
I don’t think they should reward failure, nor should they reward success with more money (a self-fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one). Surely, with the extra money now coming in thanks to the TV deal, the argument has to be that there should be no such thing as positional prizes, and that the TV money should in fact be split equally amongst all clubs? At the top end teams will still want to win the league and achieve qualification for Europe, at the bottom nobody will want to be relegated. In the short term inequality will likely still exist, but at least the rich would not be getting richer quite as faast as they are now.
I’d love to see a greater emphasis on levelling up, but this strategy ain’t it. Being more serious about the fair play rules could help a great deal – if the massive spending that some owners get away with really is brought in line with earnings. It’s clear that Man City obviously plan on spending big again this year (and probably Chelsea), and if they do, would like to know how that fits within the rules.
Wage caps would probably be the most effective means, but as you say, hard to achieve in the current political context of the Premier League. Of course, this inequality is not just restricted to the bottom 14 teams in the PL, but the whole football league structure, which means that there should be a more even distribution of all the PL’s TV franchise largesse. Of course, even Norwich is not likely to support this very much at the moment.
City’s current strategy is to invest in the Academy. And last season there weren’t so much a top 6 and then bottom 14 in the PL as 3 sub-sets. For the second sub-set the Europa League comes into play – and as the Spanish sides outside the top two have shown, this can be more exciting than we generally view it.
For now it is the genuine implementation of the fair play rules that is about the best we can hope for – at least with the growth in concerns about football’s debt filled finances, there is some momentum behind these. As for Norwich, we will need to be around for a little longer before our voice even counts for anything.
Seems to me you can draw comparisons with Formula 1 a few years ago – the “haves” winning everything and the rest making up the numbers.
They seem to have got things a little fairer by limiting the budget in some way. Maybe cap the transfer budget allowed in a season so that the “also rans” would not be simply outbid.
@Michael D – I personally have very little hope for financial “fair play”, it’s a sham designed to limit competition, not increase it. Think about it – if you limit clubs’ spending to what they afford, who is going to spend the most? Obviously, that’s the clubs with the most to spend! So those clubs who have the highest revenue through merchandising, ticket sales and sponsorship (in other words, the Man Utd’s and Man City’s of this world) will continue to dominate the game. If you don’t believe me, look at what UEFA has done to Malaga, who dared to challenge the status quo in Spain.
Yesterdays results blow this stupid argument right out of the water, you want to see virtually the same 20 teams compete against each other most years.
Competition breeds strength, rewarding failure does not. If it aint broke dont fix it.This is the kind of argument Tony Blair and New Labour would come up with. Sport is about losing as well as winning.