Shock title triumph has sparked backlash from wealthy clubs
LONGEST-SERVING PREMIER LEAGUE MEMBERS WOULD GET GREATER POWER UNDER RADICAL PLANS
“WE don’t want too many Leicester Citys,” an anonymous executive at a “big six” club told The Independent in their investigation into the future of football, published earlier this year.
It was a line that stung supporters around the country, and one that has not been forgotten by Leicester City fans.
Following the emergence of Project Big Picture – Liverpool and Manchester United’s proposal to drastically change football in England – the quote is doing the rounds again.
It was suggested by the executive that too much unpredictability was bad for business.
City’s title win was as unpredictable an event as English football has ever seen.
Now the backlash is coming. It was always expected that after the richest clubs were shown up by City – who were smarter in the transfer market, in the dressing room, and on the pitch in 2015-16 – they would throw more money around to reassert their dominance.
Despite City outwitting the elite with a starting 11 that cost under £25 million, there is no more surefire way to guarantee success than mass expenditure, and so the high-profile clubs again spent big in the transfer market, controlling the top-six places until City broke in again last season.
City’s own players were targeted. N’Golo Kante left for Chelsea, while Jamie Vardy, Riyad Mahrez, and Danny Drinkwater were clung on to, the latter two eventually leaving.
In the summers since, City have sold one big name to a richer club every year, a transfer understood by supporters to be necessary for the club’s development.
But while the elite clubs increased their spending, it seems a rather more radical plan was being discussed behind the scenes, with these talks said to have begun in 2017, a year after City’s astonishing triumph.
On the face of it, there are many aspects to Project Big Picture that would be welcomed by all: the cap on away ticket prices, subsidised travel, safe standing, a bailout for EFL clubs who run the risk of capitulation during the pandemic, funding for the women’s game and grassroots.
These are charitable offers that protect clubs and benefit fans.
But, as established by the unnamed executive, clubs do not think like charities, they think like businesses.
With the League Cup scrapped and the Premier League reduced to 18 places, there would be more time and space for an expanded European competition and lucrative preseason tournaments around the globe.
TV revenue would be split less equally between clubs, with a greater focus on merit, even allowing for the top clubs to have one poor season, with the past three years’ finishes considered in how much each side gets.
Plus – and this is the kicker – the “one club, one vote” system would disappear, with greater power handed to the nine longest-serving members of the Premier League.
City are 11th on the list. If six of those nine vote the same way, it won’t matter how the other 12 clubs feel.
Currently, 14 out of the 20 sides have to agree to a proposal for changes to be made.
Among fans around the country, there is a distrust of the big clubs and what they could do with that greater power.
Those sides will argue that as longer-serving members of the division who bring in a bigger portion of the revenue that their voice deserves greater weight.
They are what makes the Premier League product so financially lucrative. But if they make further changes to benefit themselves and maintain their places at the top, for how long could their dominance sustain an audience?
Supporters know that results like Aston Villa 7-2 Liverpool, and Man City 2-5 Leicester are possible, and that’s why they keep coming back.
Fans want to be able to think their club can win big, like Leicester did four years ago.
But the chances are decreasing. In the 1980s, 20 different clubs finished inside the top flight’s top six. In the 2010s, there were just 11.
Project Big Picture suggests the elite want to see that number reduce further over the course of the next decade.
It seems City’s glory has had a greater impact on the elite than first thought, with the backlash to such an unlikely triumph even more fierce than first feared.
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