The excitement of the Premier League is being sucked away

Let’s forget the Premier league top 4 race for a second. Let’s forget the top 6 race as well. In fact, let’s forget any race for European football. There is a much more significant and increasingly daunting race that clubs must be prepared to battle it out for over the next few seasons. 

The top 17 Premier League clubs have been safe for two seasons in a row now. None of them have been relegated - instead we have seen the 3 promoted sides get bounced straight back down to the championship in back-to-back seasons, something that has never transpired before in English top-flight history.

Let’s not beat around the bush here. Wolves have been dreadful this campaign, as have Spurs, West ham and Everton. Any other season, these teams would have been in a relegation dog-fight considering none of them have even reached 40 points yet with 7 games to go. Yet every club I have mentioned knows they are completely safe from the drop. This is because Ipswich, Southampton and Leicester are about to set the record for least points ever accumulated by the bottom 3 finishing teams in prem history, breaking the record that was set… oh last year.

We are heading down a very dangerous path in the Premier League. As the money keeps on rolling in and the best players continue to arrive in England, (Matheus Cunha literally plays for Wolves) the gap between the two top tiers of English football will just continue to grow and no matter how much money you spend if you come up from the Championship, the odds are completely stacked against you from the first gameweek. This also has an effect on the Championship because in most cases, when the teams get relegated from the Prem their squad will often be so much better than the other ones in the second division, that they’ll often just come straight back up and the vicious yo-yo effect will continue.

Something has to be done and quickly because this cannot continue. The play-off final is already known as ‘the most expensive game in football’ because of the money you reap from winning but is it even enough at this point? Do promoted clubs need even more to compete? Do even stricter spending regulations need to be placed on premier league teams? Even after the introductions of PSR and FFP. You can’t just pump more money into the English pyramid because some clubs will begin to sink even quicker. What about introducing a Bundesliga-like play-off tournament for the teams that finish from 15th to 18th? That way we might see more shocking results.

There has to be a solution - right? Any team that gets promoted will have to turn over the majority of their squad to have a fighting chance of staying in the league and even that might not be enough. I’m not a financial expert but I know the rich getting richer whilst the wealth of everyone else stays the same, can’t be a good thing and it can’t be good branding for the Prem.

This season is shaping up like it will be one to forget, partly for reasons I have already mentioned - the FA, UEFA - some sort of board has to introduce some sort of regulations to ensure that this issue doesn’t occur again because it’s ripping the excitement from the so-called ‘best league in the world.’