Is the Big Six a figment of our admiration or a group protected by the petrified Premier League by PSR? It’s a heavy one…
Send your views to theeditor@football365.com. Maybe read the mood rankings first.
What is this Big Six business?
Can we please have a chat about the Big Six Premier league clubs in advance of the new season. I keep on reading it and my brain does a fart every time I do. It makes no sense to me.
By definition the Big Six should be a clearly demarcated separate group that are out in front of the pack, no?
So we have based on last year’s table: Liverpool, Arsenal, City, Chelsea, Newcastle. So far so clear for me. Although there is very little point separation between Chelsea, Newcastle and Villa and Forest just behind them. Both Villa and Forest have very strong squads and a good financial setup. But I presume they are not included in the Big Six as there are two of them.
So to drop the pretence of ignorance I presume United are the final Big Six club when I read it. Does everyone think this? Historically and financially they warrant their place undoubtedly but in terms of league position they obviously finished 15th and are not playing in Europe next year. But if they are included should we not include Spurs? They finished 17th and have a massive stadium and were in the top 4 not that long ago.
Oh but you say it’s United’s spending power in the market. Is it though? They have signed one player this summer and appeared to have struggled thereafter. Spurs seem much more successful and proactive and comparable to the activity of the ‘Big Five’.
To me United’s inclusion feels like a three-card trick we have all fallen for. So in summary league position matters for the top 5 but not the 6th position. History matters but only for 6th not 5th place and spending power matters but not what you spend it on or on who wants to join you.
Simples.
That’s the Big Six sorted.
Dave LFC
(You are – wilfully or otherwise – confusing the top six with the Big Six. We are basically talking about the six clubs in the Premier League with the highest revenue which are – according to Deloitte – Man City, Man Utd, Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham and Chelsea. Newcastle are sixth but their revenue is less than half that of Man Utd – Ed)
We’re all just the Washington Generals. Or Ernie Wise.
Interesting reading Paco’s nonsense countered by common sense from James, Chris and especially Ken in today’s mailbox. Ken’s point about entertainment usurping sporting values struck a particular chord with me.
Back in the 60s and 70s when I were just a lad, and we all lived in a box in a hole in t’middle of t’motorway fast lane (“luxury!” I hear you cry), there wasn’t much on the telly, but we’d get a few treats at Christmas. Big film TV premieres, Disney Time, Morecambe and Wise, Top of the Pops with the Christmas number one. For a few years, we also got to see The Harlem Globetrotters travelling basketball / entertainment team. They always played brilliant, entertaining basketball with wonderful trick shots, dribbling, ball juggling and comedy routines thrown in. Their opponents were routinely made to look foolish, and, in my naivety, I often wondered what was in it for them, why did they keep turning up and suffering the humiliation Meadowlark Lemon, Curly et al would inflict on them.
Of course that’s what they were there for, paid stooges to make the Globetrotters look good, like Ernie Wise was mainly there to highlight Eric Morecambe’s comedy genius. It turns out they were another touring team called the Washington Generals set up purely for that purpose. It wasn’t intended to be genuine sport, it was pretend eye-candy for TV viewers around the world.
So what’s this got to do with football? Well, as a Villa fan, my team has progressed far enough to become one of those knocking against the glass ceiling of the ever more entrenched “wealthy elite”. Those in the elite were fortunate enough to have either been successful when the PL rose to prominence and gained a global audience via Sky TV rights and the internet, or they were able to buy their way unrestricted into the club via incredibly wealthy owners.
By the time Villa, Newcastle, Forest and a few other clubs acquired owners who were willing to invest heavily in their clubs, the football authorities made sure the ceiling was not only firmly in place but was made of PSR/FFP/115 reinforced bullet-proof glass. And the football authorities’ clear intent is to disarm outsiders of any tools capable of breaking it and killing or wounding their golden goose.
Thus it has effectively created a mini-super league within the PL (notwithstanding the astounding capacity of United and to a lesser extent Spurs to monumentally screw things up despite every advantage) and, to my mind, this is intentional, driven by fear that the wealthier clubs will be tempted to join an actual super league by the likes of Real and Juventus if their positions aren’t protected within the PL and CL.
As a consequence it increasingly feels like Villa, and other ambitious teams in similar and lesser positions, are simply there to make up the numbers. Two thirds of the PL just a bunch of Washington Generals and Ernie Wises, stooges only there to provide pseudo competition for the wealthy elite, to make them look good.
Surely it is only a matter of time before Chelsea, Citeh and their European counterparts start working comedy routines, trick shots and ritual humiliations into their performances for the delight of plastics, glory hunters (yes I mean you Paco – why Chelsea Paco, and not Fulham or Brentford?) and casual TV viewers across the globe, safe in the knowledge that they will still win because the other guys are only there to lose to them.
The Club World Cup is just the latest inevitable symptom and manifestation of this travelling circus approach. There’s money in it for FIFA, and there’s money in it for those who already have more than anyone else, and there is gratification for some of the global glory hunters who will be queuing up for more.
The issue I have is that PL clubs have the power to change things but they don’t seem to want to. I can only imagine that some smaller PL clubs without mega wealthy owners don’t vote to amend or abolish FFP rules because they fear that the elite group would only get bigger and they still wouldn’t be in it . Or they fear it will “damage the product” if certain teams aren’t successful all the time. If that’s the case they deserve nothing more than regular humiliation at the hands of the big boys.
Anyway how fitting that a club that’s been a clown car on fire for the last 2-3 seasons should win the CWC and that the world’s second biggest clown should be upstaged by clown number one at the trophy presentation. You couldn’t make it up.
Kevin Villa (my rants are getting longer as my patience wears thinner)
Newcastle optimism still abounds
I recently wrote in about my worries about NUFC’s transfer business, but right now I’m feeling a little silly. Our pursuit of João Pedro had me suspecting that Eddie Howe was pursuing the squad flexibility for a 442 or a 352; the sudden news that Ekitike was on the table makes me wonder why we ever bothered with Pedro. If Eintracht is compliant about payment structure, this could be a real coup, and I hope it goes through.
Isak and Ekitike playing together could be madness in its own right, but the option of reverting to a front three when one is injured or misfiring is gold, as far as Eddie is concerned. Low blocks have flummoxed the Mags since he arrived, and he hasn’t previously had a Plan B. Elanga and Gordon will pin fullbacks wide if we play a 442, I could see Tonali and Bruno scoring a lot more goals in that system.
If it’s Eddie and his son getting these deals done, Imma have to admit I’m impressed. Isak is going nowhere, whatever Liverpool supporters’ fever dreams tell them. I suspect, however, that either Barnes or Gordon would leave by January. Joe Willock to Manchester United has never been mooted, but it would be a decent move for them, West Ham, or any of the promoted sides. He seems fully engaged with the squad, but isn’t at his best as a squad player. As a recent article here pointed out, we’d be stupid to sell home-grown Sean Longstaff going into the UCL.
But we definitely need a RCB. There’s been a lot of talk about Giorgio Scalvini, who has about as big an upside as I could hope for, but Marc Guehi would probably be available at a similar price, and he’s pretty reliably healthy. Tough call, but Newcastle hasn’t gotten many calls wrong since the takeover.
Chris C, Toon Army DC
READ: Newcastle United high in the Premier League mood rankings
All indications?
I wish I had Dion’s confidence when it came to transfers, but I would take issue with their suggestion that “all indications seem to suggest” Eberechi Eze will join Arsenal. In fact, I’d argue there is one crucial indication suggesting he won’t, so far, and that is Arsenal’s refusal to meet Crystal Palace’s valuation of one of their best players. A valuation, he says reaching for the drum, which will be based on the cost of replacing him with someone else’s best player, and them knowing Palace have just come into a lot of money.
Based on what happened last time this situation occurred, maybe someone could start us off speculating on who 2025’s answer to Nicolas Pepe will be.
Ed Quoththeraven
Not that bad at Arsenal, really
Ok, so I did also write in mocking the idiots in our fanbase, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater/drown in our own misery too much lads.
Arsenal are doing just fine. 5000 fans out of a fan base of tens of millions is hardly a crutch to beat us all with.
Every fanbase has its headbangers, and as one of the biggest fanbases in the world, that means we have a greater number numerically than most. Holding AFTV against us at this point is about 5 years out of date (they’ve been an afterthought/meaningless for ages) and the social media/reaction game with other clubs has far evolved them at this point.
Is the mood really 16th? Of course not, we’re going on a spending spree now that those of us who ground through the early Emirates era could only have dreamed of. The Gyokeres/Sesko debate/hysteria was fuelled as much from outside voices as the inside (it was never a clear choice between them and reasonable points for/against either). Sure, as a paid up member of Team Sesko, its a bit disappointing and I have some worries, but like 99.9% of normal fans, it isn’t hard to move past that and support Big Vic.
There’s a lot riding on this season for sure, so nervous anticipation might be the best mood descriptor, but after last season, which felt like a series of cartoon anvils and grand pianos falling on our heads, I don’t think it’s too presumptuous to say we’re quite looking forward to going into a new campaign with real squad depth, a proper preseason and hopefully no immediate injuries.
Tom, Leyton
Darwinism and hair
I agree with Thomas. I think if we keep Nunez he will finally have a good season.
He is a reverse Samson (And Torres for that matter). When he gets a haircut he gets stronger and plays better. Did it before the 21-22 season when he bagged 26 goals.
Neil, LFC, USA
PS I wonder how many times Gianni had to explain the rules to Trump during the CWC final.
…Thomas McConnell is right. Darwin is going to have a massive season and I put it down to his haircut. Mo went close-cropped last summer and had the best individual season in PL history, so now that Darwin has done the same I’m expecting 20 league goals.
Though probably for someone in Saudi, sadly.
On the CWC, the biggest issue beyond overplaying players and the dreadful spectacle around the games is that the amount of money involved is going to massively skew domestic leagues across the world. Auckland FC made USD3.5m for being in the tournament – that’s 4 years of turnover. How can other clubs in their league compete? It’s like when the Champions League expanded and clubs from smaller nations that happened to be in the first iteration got enough money to dominate their leagues for a decade. More money to fewer clubs means less competition – all Infantino seems to want is to have the best teams play each other all the time to make as much money as possible, which reduces the excitement and ultimately overall quality of the sport.
Tom, Andover
…Thomas McConnell… I don’t know why but I had the exact same thought. I feel like this season Darwin is going to have an amazing season, no matter who he is playing for, and I had a suspicion it would still be with LFC.
For all his misses, he has the bare attributes to scare most defenders. He has been unable to bring it all together so far and as a result looks like a car wreck.
But I remember players having that one season (maybe 2) where everything clicked and they rose from mediocre/decent to look like world beaters. Like when James Beattie played his way into the England set up in 2003.
I think this is going to be Darwin’s one good season… and I have nothing to back that up with whatsoever. It is not rational. It doesn’t seem feasible. I’d be shocked. But there you go.
Joe LFC
Advice to the promoted
As a slightly bruised and battered Ipswich fan, I can only give the following advice to the newly promoted teams.
Don’t buy/swap too many players.
We upgraded 9 of our starting 11, and bought 16 players in total.
TLDR: We lost our style of play, culture, and resilience, and were still trying to find our best team in April.
Bedding down new players is not easy, from Real Madrid downwards.
The guys that secured 100 points and promotion basically have to be trusted, even if it is clear that they’re not good enough – some of our best results (not many, I know) had a core of 6-7 players who played for Ipswich in Div 1. The rest were strangers until it was far too late…
That, of course, is the Sword of Damocles attached to promotion – damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Hopefully see you next year – enjoy Liam Delap…
Matthew (ITFC – a shedload of cash and who knows)
Cole Palmer exposes Sir GarethAfter another MoM (or Superior Player according to the Yanks) performance from Palmer, we can see Sir Gareth only played him for 144 minutes out of a possible 690 (plus injury time I can’t be arsed to count) in Euro 2024. Compare that to
Bellingham (why always me indeed) 671 mins
Foden 622 mins
Experimenting with Trent in midfield also. We may have world-class players in England, but we’re certainly not using them. Hopefully Tuchel will do better, after he’s finished with his Henderson experiment.
Thank you Sir.
Simon S, Cheshire
…Cole Palmer has played in 4 senior finals (European Championship, European super cup, Europa conference and Club World Cup) with 4 goals and 3 assists. 1.75 goal involvements per game and scoring or assisting 78% of his teams’ goals in those 4 finals.
Leaving him out of the Conference League squad in the first half of the season was superb decision making as was recalibrating the team to be less reliant on him during the season.
Chelsea need to go cojones out next season in terms of trusting their whole squad (including George and Acheampong). The top players should only be playing 2 games in 3 and squad players should be starting 1 in 3.
After such a long season ending in the US heat they really need to pace themselves next season and rotate heavily. They’ve put together an amazing squad. Next season they need to fully use it.
Ben Buston
A final word on the Club World Cup
I think the main thing that folks like me have against eminently political things like the revamped Club World Cup, is the encouraging of political discourse in football, and mails like the intellectual drivel contained in Paco’s note from Accra.
In it s simplest form, you have the claim from football fans the world over, when something they want is acquired by an arse, or a nation state, or gets a sponsor from a pollutant or war criminal, that ‘what are they supposed to do; I was a fan first, my story with this is longer than theirs’. And it’s hard to argue against. I know how I’d hope to react if it was my team, but I don’t know what I’d do for sure.
I do know I didn’t watch a second of the Qatar World Cup, and ideally would have liked every match report to have started with the sentence “As the families of the deceased workers are still trying to get the wages due, and the bodies remain shamefully missing, we watched a great game of football today as…”. But, it’s the World Cup. Football has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. It brings people together and is a cauldron for joy, for the most part. So if folks wanted to watch Qatar, they should.
But those arguments don’t apply for the revamped version of the CWC; This is a ‘new’ tournament, so an opportunity to hold to your principles, or declare you have none. The CAPSLOCK brigade can rightly and perpetually laugh at Jordan Henderson for demonstrably being dim, but if they watched the CWC then I can’t see how they can have a go at him for his ethical stances or lack there-of.
It was funded by the Saudi regime, proposed by Infantino and for the personal glory of Infantino, hosted by Trump under the spectre of ICE, and played upon condemnation from player-unions and managers like Ancelloti amongst many, many others. You had the very easy option of just electing not to watch, but if you did it was transparent what you were supporting, who was paying for it, and who benefited from it.
As for Paco’s arguments about its reception globally, his raving review doesn’t tally with there being literally zero bidders to broadcast it, so it had to be propped up by the ghouls behind DAZN, and ticket sales were considerably lower than when the same teams visit the same venues for pre-season friendlies.
We have to be mindful of our own echo chambers and just because mine thinks one thing it doesn’t mean everyone’s does, but it shouldn’t also tally that just because Paco had a whale of time watching this it doesn’t mean broadcasting and attendance numbers haven’t been abysmal for this thing that they literally had to give away free-to-air because no one would pay for it.
And it expressly being a vehicle to increase the wealth of European football clubs does somewhat chime against your ludicrous point that this tournament offering three games to Boca so Real Madrid, Chelsea or PSG can win a billion is for the benefit of the ‘global game’.
Finally, my not watching this has sod all to do with bigotry or the colonial past of Britain, which you mis-spelled as England. I’m well aware of what was done, and the reason I’m aware of it is because there is considerable effort to try and educate on it, via school, subsidised documentaries and case histories from the BBC, and eminently successful historians, of every race and nation, whom are either British themselves or found a home and commercial success in Britain in trying to educate us on the abominations of the past and present, and those voices are amplified in the mainstream print media rather than quashed.
There is no comparison as to what nation is ‘worst’ without a tedious race to the bottom and attempts to trivialise what should never be trivialised. But politely, what is now Ghana does not have a history of rainbows and unicorns. I say this not to say ‘you’re just as bad’ but to say that every nation, hidden it’s dark recesses, has been an arsehole. The more pertinent question is what is your country doing to try and move things forward, and of that, I am at least grateful that Britain does more than post colonial France, and Belgium, and Spain, and Portugal. This is not a source of pride in any way shape or form.
In fact for the most part, I see the country led by morons trying desperately to undo the very small positive steps taken. But the things you know happened account for 13% of our 3000 year history. It’s enough to damn our reputation but doesn’t damn who we are trying to be. We are, after all, the land that has a red cross as a flag because we stole from it from a bigger-boy in the Mediterranean, entirely because we were so repeatedly raided and enslaved that we had to steal the valour of someone who could fight back, until we were able to ourselves.
We are the fans that march behind a song written by left wing comedians and scousers, about the improbability of hope and tacit acceptance that we could be successful but likely won’t be. The nation that has three lions on our badge rather than one, like Scotland, as it’s a crest of compromise. Just because we have taken against something, and are (in my case) white, doesn’t mean the opinion is invalid or due to bigotry.
And frankly, when a site for chatting about the nonsense of football becomes an exercise of thought pieces on colonialism you have to acknowledge that the beautiful game is being stolen by arseholes with political ends. That the fact we are talking about this should emphasise this is not what football should be about.
Tom G
Loving the Lionesses
Like Matt (Gooner exiled in Essex) I watched the England Wales women’s Euro game rather than the Chelsea PSG men’s Club World Cup final. Largely because I had absolutely no interest in the two teams playing in the Club World Cup final.
I don’t support any of the teams that played in the Club World Cup but I support England at that means supporting any England team be it the men’s senior England team, the U21 men’s England team and the senior women’s England team. I too found it refreshing and in general I find watching the women’s England team refreshing and more enjoyable than watching the men’s England team. This is because with the women’s team there isn’t the toxicity that surrounds the men’s team.
No abuse directed at the players if they underperform, no racism aimed at the black players from knuckle dragging “fans” and no vitriol from the English media. Also the female England players private lives aren’t subjected to anything like the same level of scrutiny as their male counterparts so we don’t get who their dating as a media distraction. And in general there isn’t the same media circus that you get with the men’s team come every major tournament where everything including what the players had for breakfast is poured over and debated. It’s all so refreshing, more enjoyable and is about the football rather than anything else.
Dan, London