Everybody Rolls With Their Fingers Crossed

Part I — Why do we do it?

Every season, it seems the glass ceiling has another layer added to it. Every season the gulf becomes greater. Every season, our chances of ending our trophy drought, or just compete, become slimmer. While much of that is down to mismanagement at our club, the hopelessness of ever being successful could apply to more than half of the Premier League.

And yet they still play to near full houses every week. So why do we do it?

The American Model

American contributors have pointed out on this site in the past that the way the Premier League is now simply wouldn’t fly there, that the majority of the paying public wouldn’t waste their time and money watching their team in a competition that they know they don’t have a cat in hell’s chance of winning.

Of the major sports over there, I can only speak for the NFL, and the set-up is so different. That the worst performing teams will have first picks in the next draft is well known. Not as well known is that they have a much truer “Swiss system” of fixtures than the Champions League claims to have – my understanding, and American readers can feel free to correct me, is that outside of the six divisional games, you’ll generally play teams with a similar record to yourselves the previous season. You can be cynical and view such a system as rewarding failure – in reality, it keeps things more competitive.

Also, 14 teams out of 32 qualify for the playoffs (to decide the Champions in the Superbowl), and even then, you don’t need to have one of the 14 best records to qualify. The way it works, it’s possible to lose more matches than you win and still qualify if the other three teams in your division have a worse record. And then it’s the lottery of knockout playoffs, so everyone has a chance.

So even if your team did terribly the season before, you know that you’ll be able to improve the squad with higher draft picks, have a potentially easier fixture list than most, especially if your recruitment is more astute than your fellow strugglers, and if you get lucky and the other teams in your division have a poor season,  you can at least make the post-season and go from there.

And even if you feel that your team is beyond that, and that it will take more than one recruitment window to fix them, and you’re in a division with one of the best teams in the NFL and so are unlikely to finish top or make a wildcard spot, and therefore you’re not hopeful for the next season, there’s always the hope that, say, five years down the line, with good recruitment and coaching, your team will be ready to challenge. Like football used to be here. And if and when that happens, knowing that you were in on the ground floor and supporting them when they were the worst team in the league only makes it all the more satisfying. Again, like it used to be here.

Here now 

Contrast that with the current state of the Premier League. Going into this season, everyone except Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City and maybe Chelsea commenced their Premier League campaign knowing that they couldn’t possibly win it. And in most cases, you can also forget about any five year plan that used to be the staple of new managers at struggling teams -  nowadays, everyone outside of the old Sky-four and Manchester City know that they’ll never win the league again, barring another 5,000 to one miracle like Leicester. In saying that, Leicester’s title happened almost a decade ago, and the landscape has since changed – FFP has shown its teeth, and the top clubs (except Manchester United!) have gotten a lot more savvy with their scouting and recruitment and retention of talented youngsters – the chances of just one of another Mahrez of Kante playing at their peak for an unfancied or newly promoted side again are practically non-existent, never mind both of them.

Even if the league had been like this in the past, there was always the cup. Forty years ago, the FA Cup had all the glamour and prestige that the Champions League has now, and realistically, anyone in the top division could win it and anyone in the top two divisions could reach the final.

Now, the gulf between the top few clubs and the rest has become such that the FA Cup (and the League Cup too) is won by one of the old Sky Four or Manchester City every season. The best anyone else can hope for is to reach the final, or maybe just reach the semi-final and enjoy a day out at Wembley. Combined with the fact that the Cup has lost so much of its lustre and status that it barely registers if you do. It’s gone the way of the League Cup. It’s distinctly third rate. Even if you were to defy the odds and win it, it wouldn’t mean the same as winning it forty years ago.

It's the nonsensical combination of being harder to win and somehow less prestigious if you win it. It’s the worst of both worlds.

To come back to the phenomenal popularity of the Premier League, let’s say Wolves were playing Crystal Palace in the 5^th round or even the 6^th round of the Cup – what do you think the attendance would be? Around 70% of capacity would be my guess, and that’s possibly a kind one. Yet, if the same two teams were playing each other in the Premier League, in any circumstances - a mid-table nothing game, taking place mid-week in January - the attendance would be close to the 100% mark.

It makes no sense.

Nothing New

Sadly what I’m writing is nothing new or original. Much of the above could easily have been written about 18 years ago. The poor turnout and lack of interest or excitement in the 3^rd round of the FA Cup raised eyebrows in 2007, while the old Sky Four had already started to hold a monopoly – the identity of the four Champions League qualifiers from the Premier League had become depressingly predictable. Tony Mobray, who was at the time trying to get West Brom back into the Premier League, expressed dismay that the best his side could ever hope for now would be to reach the (very much diminished) UEFA Cup (as it was still known), and that such limitations on achievement outside of the Sky Four could be causing supporters to become disillusioned.

I was going to say nothing has changed, but it’s actually become even worse since then. As I discussed at length recently (and boy, was it at length), so-called Financial Fair Play has only strengthened the system for the rich to get richer and increase the gulf between the elite few and the rest. While the media had always shown bias towards the Red Cartel, back in 2007 we at least had the relatively neutral Andy Gray, Trevor Francis et al providing their take on the big games. The last dozen or so years, they’ve been replaced by a new generation of ex-Liverpool and Manchester United personnel who don’t even try to hide their allegiance. Their matches have basically become Fanzone with ex-players. As the worldwide reach of the Premier League has increased and the game becomes ever more commercial, match going fans had already gone from being “supporters” to “customers” in 2007. I’d say they’re now “extras”, there to provide atmosphere for the global TV audience, but at least extras get paid. It's more like they've become part of the live studio audience.

 

In the first couple of years of the Premier League, attendances at most grounds were way below capacity – Goodison itself would often see gates of less than 20,000. Yet back then, in addition to more reasonable ticket prices and more convenient kick-off times, the glass ceiling hadn’t materialized yet, and a couple of years of good coaching and shrewd transfer dealings could see you challenging for honours again.

Now any hope of that has gone and yet attendances, not just at Goodison but everywhere, are at close to capacity.

So to go back to my original question

Why?

Well, one thing American sports don’t have is a league pyramid like we do. If we don’t like our lot, there are 72 other teams in the Football League who would happily swap places with us. Take into account the number of non-league clubs who feel they realistically have the infrastructure to make the Premier League, and there’s probably 100 clubs who would gleefully take being in the top League even with no chance of doing anything beyond surviving every season.

The marketing and hype around the Premier League (how often is it given the very subjective and dubious moniker of “the best league in the world”?!) has been such that it’s considered the only place to be. Just being part of the show – and it has become a TV show -  is all that matters for many. There’s millions of fans who support clubs outside the top division who would jump at the chance to see their team as part of Sky’s flagship coverage, even if they’re just fodder for the Red Cartel and have to listen to Neville, Carragher and Keane cheer and celebrate and gloat when the inevitable thrashing happens. Or better still, be part of that live studio audience.

Scores of clubs outside the top division would be happy to be making up the numbers in the Premier League, and who cares if the best you can hope for is to emulate what Brighton are doing at the moment.

Brighton themselves spent a few seasons barely staying in the Football League at the turn of the millennium, having to ground share with Gillingham before playing at an athletics track. Now, being in their fancy new AmEx Stadium, competing well with the big boys and challenging for a place in Europe every year, they must be rubbing their eyes every season, and wont care a jot that this will be as good as it will ever get.

Bournemouth came close to going the way of Bury, and spent many years outside the top two divisions, never mind the top one. To be mid-table and holding their own in the Premier League would have been beyond their wildest dreams back when they nearly went out of existence. A season outside of the top flight has probably only served to make them more grateful, and even if they end up becoming a yo-yo club, after what they’ve been through in recent decades, they’ll be delighted if it stays that way.

So many other clubs can only hope for such a change in fortunes.

And we’re not just talking about all the small clubs here – there are some historically big clubs on the outside looking in enviously. Preston North End – the original invincibles but out of the top flight for so long now that they’d love to just get back there. Blackburn Rovers – they’ve actually won the Premier League and yet now they would quite gladly, I’d imagine, take finishing 17^th in the Premier League for ten straight seasons if it means they get to be there again. Sheffield Wednesday have been out of the top flight for well over two decades. So many other clubs who’ve won the League more than once - Bolton Wanderers, Derby County, Huddersfield Town, Portsmouth, Sunderland, the list goes on of big clubs with previous high expectations who know they can never get back to what they once were.

Even two time European Cup Winners Nottingham Forest have only recently returned to the top division after over 20 years absence. To their credit, they’re doing really well in the league at the moment, but I’m sure that, however well or badly their team fare, they’re happy just to be back.

In a way, that’s where we’ve been spoiled, if that’s the right word. There have only been six ever presents in the Premier League since the breakaway in 1992. The old Sky Four, Tottenham and ourselves. The latter two being the only ones who haven’t won it.

Spurred On

That puts Tottenham in a similar predicament to ourselves. And indeed we did seem to run parallel with Tottenham for a while – often in the bottom half in the first decade of the Premier League, improved in the second decade and often competing with each other to be the “best of the rest”, while trophies tended to prove elusive.

Tottenham have just two League Cups in their trophy cabinet for the entire Premier League era, the last of which came in 2008. Even so, despite us almost being on a par with Tottenham for some time, and even finishing above them just 10 years ago, they’ve now raced light years ahead of us.

Despite the ongoing lack of trophies, Tottenham have at least enjoyed a few adventures in the Champions League, even reaching the final in 2019.  They boast a squad of exciting talent and can match anyone with their fast counter attacking style, which is exciting to watch for neutrals, never mind their own supporters. They’ve even been on the fringes of the title race a couple of times, and, unlike everyone else outside the old Sky Four and Manchester City, Tottenham supporters can begin every season knowing that while the title itself is a long shot, Champions League qualification remains a realistic possibility – although they don’t reach this promised land every year, they know that if one of the usual teams up there has a lacklustre season, Tottenham will usually be there to capitalise.

Their match going supporters also get to enjoy a superb new stadium that’s the envy of some of their more successful rivals.  

In Closing

That just leaves us.

After only spending four of 137 years outside the top division, it’s hard to say we should be grateful for the fact that we’ve been ever presents in the Premier League. All it’s done is made us want more. Made us question what seems to be the new order of things.

Our recent struggles have certainly made for more excitement, and the focus on avoiding disaster has taken our minds off our lack of success.

And there is still hope. Aston Villa have shown that. It will need the team to either still be in the top division or quickly return there when this new stadium is built. It will mean this takeover going smoothly and the new owners having more business and football acumen than their predecessors. It will take a complete overhaul of the current squad and years of rebuilding financially to fall in line with PSR without having to sell players. It’s going to take a long time.

But hey, if we don’t like it while we wait, there are scores of clubs outside the top division ready to take our place. 

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