Let’s be honest, warnings that the Premier League’s wealth was insulating a small band of clubs and slamming the door on the EFL have been going on for so long we stopped listening a while ago.
When all three promoted clubs - Burnley, Luton and Sheffield United - were relegated at the end of the 2023/24 season we shrugged it off as an anomaly, their respective 16, 24, and 26 points evidence of a bad crop.
It had only happened once before, way back in 1997/98. There was no need to panic.
There is now. It’s a decade or so late, but it’s here.
Ipswich, Leicester and Southampton look destined to go down to make it two consecutive years in which the three promoted clubs fail to survive. A pattern is forming and it’s hard to see how on Earth it is broken from here.
Shop window for young players and managers
Wolves are the only remaining relegation candidate and have the benefit of a star forward signed from Atletico Madrid for £45m.
Matheus Cunha was on the fringes of superstar status at La Liga’s third-biggest club when he swapped it for better wages and a better shop window in the Premier League’s bottom half.
If that transfer had happened in the summer of 2024 he would not have risked Saints, Ipswich or Leicester, but he would have happily done so for Crystal Palace, Everton or West Ham.
Transfers like that one are happening with increasing regularity as the top flight hoovers up wealth and status, so much so that a tipping point has been reached.
The best young coaches in Europe are moving into the bottom half of the Premier League and they are luring top-tier players, too.
Never before has England’s top flight had so much quality at its bottom end.
Cunha, Mohamed Kudus, Bruno Fernandes, Illiman Ndiaye, Jean-Philippe Mateta, Son Heung-min, Bryan Mbeumo: every single club in the bottom half has at least one Champions League-level player... except for those three newcomers, none of whom are stable or reliable enough to attract one.
That’s where the vicious circle begins.
No chance for new boys
As the Premier League’s middle-class gets better and better – so much so that an off season for Manchester United and Tottenham leaves them nearer the bottom than the European places – those new to the division don’t stand a chance.
Burnley, Leeds and Sheffield United are the three Championship teams most likely to be promoted in May.
With West Ham on the up under a manager recently touted for the England job, with Everton moving into their new state-of-the-art stadium, and with Crystal Palace led by the Europa League winner of 2022, it’s very difficult to see how any of the three promoted clubs can stay up next year.
Wolves are the only outlier at the moment. Cunha will be gone in the summer and mismanagement, poor recruitment, and financial difficulties could see them sucked into a relegation battle.
But that is hardly enough to signal a healthy league.
For a few years now there have been growing complaints around Europe that the Premier League is, in fact, the European Super League so many had feared coming to fruition.
Increasingly that looks to be the case, complete with the end to relegation.
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