In English football, a gulf has arisen between the finances of clubs from the Premier League and The Football League since the First Division clubs broke away to form the Premier League in 1992. Some have argued that this disparity is wider than in other European leagues where the top flight is combined with at least one division below in a league, such as Germany's Bundesliga, Italy's Serie A and Spain's La Liga. However, England has five tiers of single national divisions, compared to only two in Spain and Italy and three in Germany.
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Since the Premier League began as the FA Premier League at the start of the 1992–93 season, its member teams have received larger amounts of money in TV rights than their Football League colleagues. Prior to the formation of the Premier League, television revenues from top flight matches were shared between the 92 Football League clubs across 4 unified national professional divisions. The break away of 22 clubs to form the Premier League resulted in top flight revenues being shared exclusively between Premier League clubs.[1] The FA Premier League agreed to maintain the promotion and relegation of three clubs with the Football League, but The Football League was now in a far weaker position - without its best clubs and without the clout to negotiate high revenue TV deals. This problem was exacerbated in 2002 when ITV Digital, holder of TV rights for The Football League, went into administration. Many League clubs had invested in ground improvements and the player transfer market with anticipated television funds that never materialized, causing several clubs to enter receivership - most notably Bradford City, who were faced with debts of £36million and almost lost their Football League status as a result.
As a result, financial disparity has been cited as a reason for newly promoted teams finding it increasingly harder to establish themselves in the Premiership, thus worrying more about avoiding relegation than winning the title. The Premiership relegation places have been filled by at least one newly promoted club in all but one of the 17 seasons since its introduction, and in the 1997–98 season all three clubs were relegated. The only exception was the 2001-02 season, in which all three promoted teams survived and as of 2010–11, are still in the Premiership (Fulham, Blackburn Rovers and Bolton Wanderers).
The Premier League distributes a small portion of its television revenue to clubs that are relegated from the league in the form of "parachute payments". Starting with the 2006-07 season, these payments are in the amount of £6.5 million over the club's first two seasons in lower leagues.[2] Though designed to help teams adjust to the loss of television revenues (the average Premier League team receives £45 million while the average Football League Championship club receives £1 million[2]), critics maintain that the payments actually widen the gap between teams that have reached the Premiership and those that have not,[3] leading to the common occurrence of teams returning soon after their relegation. This, however, does not take into account former Premiership mainstays which currently are in The Football League, such as Wimbledon (who became Milton Keynes Dons in 2004 on their relocation from South London to Milton Keynes), Southampton, Sheffield Wednesday, Coventry City and Leeds United, who were founding members of the Premiership and stayed there for between nine and 12 years before going down, and have yet to return. Queens Park Rangers (also a founding premier league club) saw a 15 year absence from the premier league, before finally returning for the 2011-2012 season.
The payments have been also criticised as causing Premiership teams to play more cautiously—playing not to lose instead of playing to win—because the threat of relegation means the loss of payments from the television rights. In fact, as of December 2006, the goals-per-game average is only 2.14, the lowest it has ever been in Premiership history and lower than any other professional league in Europe. Steve Bruce, at the time manager of Birmingham City, stated that,
It's a results business... The Championship is very entertaining at the moment because about 12 clubs think they can win it. In the Premiership you've got 12 clubs shit-scared of relegation, and that's the difference.[4]
The Curse of Christmas refers to a trend where the team at the bottom of the table at Christmas has been relegated at the end of the season every year except one (2004/05 West Bromwich Albion) since the Premiership started in 1992.[5] The momentous achievement has since been dubbed 'The Great Escape' due to its improbability, particularly as West Brom were still bottom of the league on the morning of the last day of the season.
The last time a top division team had achieved this feat was in 1990-91, when Sheffield United avoided relegation after being bottom of the penultimate pre-Premiership First Division on 25 December 1990. The Blades had not won in their first 16 matches and had less than 10 points, thought they survived as they produced the form of champions in the second stage of the season and won an incredible 7 games in a row to drag themselves into a comfortable 13th place (out of 22).
Certain teams are notable for extremely poor seasons as a result of inability to come to terms with the gulf.
Swindon Town were the first such example in the 1993-94 season, when they won a mere five games out of 42 and conceded 100 goals (still a Premier League record) in their first (and to date only) season as a top flight club. One of the few bright spots of the season came when they held Manchester United (who went on to win the league title and FA Cup) to a 2-2 draw in March, and having lost 4-2 to them earlier in the season they scored more goals against the title winning side bar also relegated Oldham Athletic than any other club in the league that season. Sunderland, who had set the previous record as the "worst ever Premier League club" in 2002-03 with four wins, 19 points and 21 goals, set a new record in 2005-06, when one season after promotion they went straight back down with just three wins and 15 points, though as some consolation they scored more goals than they had the previous time. Derby County won just one league game out of 38 in the 2007-08 (1-0 at home to Newcastle United on 17 September 2007) and finished with 11 points. This was a record low for Premier League points and wins (as well as a new low of 20 goals), and the only the second team ever to complete an English professional league campaign with one win in a season (the other was Loughborough in 1900). This came one year after they had been promoted as Championship playoff winners.
There have been some strong performances by newly promoted clubs in the Premier League - particularly in its first few seasons. Blackburn Rovers were among the three teams who won promotion to the Premier League upon its formation, and bankrolled by owner Jack Walker's millions they were able to attract some of the best players in English football - most notably £3.6 million national record signing Alan Shearer. They finished fourth in their first Premier League season. Ipswich Town, one of the other promoted teams that season, were among the top five clubs as late as February 1993 and were being tipped as surprise title contenders, but a late slump in form dragged them down to 16th place.
In the second season of the Premier League, newly promoted Newcastle United finished third - the same position which was occupied by another newly promoted side, Nottingham Forest, the following year. With the exception of Ipswich Town in 2001, this was the last time a newly promoted club finished in the top five.
Middlesbrough finished 12th in the 1995-96 season after promotion, but 10 games into the season they occupied fourth place - high enough for UEFA Cup qualification -[6] - and were being touted as outsiders for the Premier League title.
In 1996-97, newly promoted Leicester City achieved top flight survival for the first time since 1986 by finishing ninth and also winning the Football League Cup to end their 33-year trophy drought.[7] Middlesbrough had been relegated from the Premier League in 1997 two years after promotion (though only through a points deduction) and were promoted back at the first attempt, and in their first Premier League campaign following relegation they finished ninth in the Premier League and only narrowly missed out on UEFA Cup qualification.[8]
Sunderland were promoted to the Premier League as Division One champions with a new record of 105 league points in 1999, and marked their return to the top flight by finishing seventh and only missing out on UEFA Cup qualification on goal difference.[9]
Charlton Athletic's return to the Premier League as Division One champions for the 2000-01 season was marked with a ninth place finish - their highest for some 50 years.[10]
In 2001-02, Blackburn Rovers returned to the Premier League two years after relegation and marked it with their first Football League Cup triumph, and a late surge in form following the trophy win took them clear of the relegation zone to a secure 10th place finish.[11] Manchester City returned to the Premier League in 2002 a year after relegation by securing the Division One title, and marked their return to the top flight with a ninth place finish - their highest in a decade.[12] After two seasons of newly promoted clubs either being relegated or narrowly scraping survival, West Ham United finished ninth in the Premier League in 2005-06 and almost won the FA Cup (only missing out due to a late Liverpool equaliser and a penalty shoot out defeat),[13] while fellow promoted side Wigan Athletic enjoyed an even more remarkable season. They were rarely outside the top five in the first half of the season, and then reached their first major cup final - the League Cup final - which they lost to Manchester United. They eventually finished 10th in the final table.[14]
Reading reached the top flight for the first time in their history for the 2006-07 season and finished eighth - narrowly missing out on UEFA Cup qualification.[15] Hull City reached the Premier League for the 2008-09, the first time they had ever appeared in the top flight and all the more remarkable considering they had begun the decade almost bankrupt in the league's basement division. An excellent start to the season saw them level on points in third place with the leading pack of Liverpool and Arsenal in mid October, though their season gradually fell away from December onwards and they ended up surviving by just a single point.[16]
Stoke City returned to the top flight at the same time as Hull's promotion, having been in exile for 23 years, and returned in reasonable style with a 12th place finish.[17] Birmingham City, who had two spells in the Premier League between 2002 and 2008, returned to the elite for the 2009-10 campaign one season after relegation and have secured a ninth place finish, the club's best in decades and one of their highest ever.[18]
Second season syndrome is a downturn in form suffered by a team in their second season after promotion, having performed relatively well in their first season. The first notable example was Ipswich Town, who were promoted to the Premier League after a five-year exile and finished fifth in 2000-01, qualifying for the UEFA Cup, but were relegated a year later. In 2005-06, for instance, newly promoted West Ham United and Wigan Athletic finished ninth and tenth in the Premier League (it was Wigan's first season as a top division club) and were runners-up in the FA Cup and Football League Cup respectively. The following season, however, they narrowly avoided relegation with respective 15th and 17th place finishes. In 2006-07, Reading were playing top division football for the first time in their history and finished eighth in the Premier League, with only a defeat on the final day of the season preventing them from qualifying for the UEFA Cup. A year later, however, a drastic loss of form in the second half of the season saw them dragged from mid table to occupy the final relegation place, and they were relegated on the last day of the season. Another example is Birmingham City, who after securing ninth position with over 50 points, were then relegated in 2010–11 after suffering a horrific downturn in form despite claiming the League Cup. Indeed, this season saw a surprisingly high number of points sending people down, with West Ham United finishing bottom with 33 points, which would have secured 17th place the previous year, and Birmingham and shock 'new-boys' Blackpool both going down on 39 points.
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