So with my last statement in mind, what do you all think this means for the Premier League as a whole?
Does having half the table involved in a relegation battle mean that the league is now so competitive that it's anyone's guess as to who will finish where and who can beat whom, or does it mean (as I suspect) that there is a clear demarcation line between the "good" and the "utterly bereft of footballing talent and/or money"?
The latter, to my mind.
And whatever talent they have, talent that they may have spotted and recruited (in lower leagues, internationally, or in the UK), and/or grown and nurtured themselves, generally has to be sold to wealthier, greedy suitors.
Actually, I think that it is more an unsettling reflection of the growing state of inequality in the Premier League, where the gap between the "good" teams (some of which are exceptionally well funded) and the rest is becoming ever wider.
In recent years, - over the past two decades - the pattern of club ownership has been transformed beyond all recognition, and that, in turn, has - inevitably - altered - the game, and has also transformed the competitions that the clubs participate in.
The old pattern of (sometimes unsavoury) local magnates gave way to (far wealthier) oligarchs and other international buyers (including the sort of outfit that owns Manchester United), and that, is in the process of being supersded by, or succeeded by, bodies with close ties to nation states with an ethics free attitude to human rights and an interest in sportswashing (funded by the bottomless purses and resources of wealthy, oil rich states). Even oligarchs cannot match the wealth of a rich nation state with an interest in soft power projection via sports washing. The Londonograd laundromat - while wealthy - will find it hard to compete.
In turn, these new seems to be generating what the Guardian described as the "multi club model", establishing "multiclub networks", an unsettling development, (777 Partners are one such example, MSP Sports Capital, another) where one company - brand focussed - owns several clubs (usually, in different countries, the current owners of Chelsea seem especially enamoured of this concept, while Everton and Newcastle are also eyeing it with interest) and where, according to one source, “It is possible that global brands would be more attracted to a global club network even if [the clubs] are individual brands.”
This has all meant that the game is - at the top - awash with money, and resources. For, fans on seats - gate receipts - no longer comprise a major part of the income of the top clubs, thus, their concerns can be dismissed, they exist to provide "local colour", and the traditional ties - and links - between a team and the community it emerged from have been severed, in a great many cases, by the construction of new stadia, physically removed from the old communities, and often far larger in order to be able to attract more people willing to pay for the experience.
It has also meant that a gap - in resources - exists between the exceptionally well funded teams, and the rest, but the real problem is that this gap (in resources) is increasing with the passing of each year and is becoming ever more pronounced and harder to bridge.
This has had the result that what used to be a relatively large number of teams that were neither competing for prizes nor threatened by relegation, teams that were safe by this stage of the season, but not challenging for anything - the teams found between roughly 7th place to somewhere between 12th and 15th - are being compressed, are shrinking.
The available space for 'mid ranking' teams is being compressed and squashed, while the gap between those at the very top and the potential for danger (relegation) at the bottom grows ever wider, while, simultaneously, the number of teams clumped, or clustered, or bunched together at the bottom, increase in number.
Until a few years ago, you used to have a few distinct strands in the Premier League.
First, there would be a battle at the very top between the top two teams for the title, most recently these two teams were Liverpool and Manchester City.
As is the case this year, they - this pair (this year Arsenal and Manchester City) - are by now well ahead of the pursuing pack; barring a complete collapse, I don't see either of them being caught.
Eight points separate Arsenal from Manchester City. Fourteen points separate Manchester City from the team in third place, which is Newcastle, who are glued to Spurs (on fourth) both with 50 points. That is, Arsenal are 22 points ahead of the team in third place - and 22 is roughly the total number of points accrued by some of the teams flirting with relegation - while there is a gap of 14 points between City in second and the teams immediately beneath them.
There are nine games remaining, and for City to be caught would require a totally improbable complete collapse - losing at least five games (thus, dropping 15 points); that is not going to happen.
The next strand, or level, is where the battle for CL places tends to take place, and you will often find up to four or five teams competing for these slots until the very end; those that do not succeed in landing a place in the Champion's League will find a place in the Europa Cup, or the next competition down.
However, it is the next level - what used to be the safety of mid table obscurity, teams that won nothing (except, perhaps, occasionally a Cup, the League (Carabao) Cup or FA Cup), and were neither challenging for places, positions, nor trophies, nor threatened with relegation that is being compressed or squashed. These were the teams you would find between 7th place and - roughly 14th or 15th.
Now, some of them are finding themselves uncomfortably close to the bottom half of the table.
The numbers (of points accrued during a season) are stretching at both ends of the table; in their marathon battles, both Liverpool and Manchester City re-wrote what was expected from aspiring champions, and the standards that they could be expected to attain. But, that also applies at the bottom.
The other thing - that this cluster at the bottom means - is that the number of points needed to secure safety, to guarantee safety, is dropping, and so are the points totals of the bottom three teams; it used to be that 40 points would (almost certainly) guarantee safety. In recent years, that has decreased; now, you can scramble to safety with around 35-36-37 points, as long as you can ensure that three teams are lying beneath you when the relegation trapdoor opens on the very last day of the season.
