Opinion
One of the lessons to be learnt from the troubles at Manchester City is that if you break the Premier League’s financial rules there will be consequences.
However, there an alternative lesson to be acknowledged.
Which is, how it’s impossible to become a truly successful Premier League club without breaking the rules.
Newcastle United and Aston Villa are the two most recent challengers to the so-called big six.
They have seen the established most financially powerful clubs using those inbuilt financial advantages to cherry pick their top players.
The same thing happened to the only team outside the ‘big six’ to win the Premier League in the last two decades.
Leicester City were swiftly stripped of most of their best players and are now languishing in the bottom half of the third tier.
CEO Richard Masters said that all clubs in the Premier League should be able to aspire….but aspire to what?
To being also rans that can never challenge the monopoly at the top of the league because ‘big six’ clubs will always come out on top in the end.
Maybe Richard Masters should look back at the very first season of the Premier League, the 1992/93 season.
Then ask himself, could this happen today?
In that opening 1992/93 Premier League season this was the top five in the final table:
Manchester United
Aston Villa
Norwich City
Blackburn Rovers
QPR (Sheffield Wednesday in seventh place)
Over to you Richard Masters, CEO of the Premier League.
(ED: In the second season of the Premier League, the final 1993/1994 table showed the top seven as: Man U, Blackburn, Newcastle United, Arsenal, Leeds, Wimbledon, Sheff Wed)