This has been a crazy season writes Kevin De Vries.
Remember last summer when Southampton sold five starting players and lost their manager Mauricio Pochettino? Well, the Saints currently sit higher in the table than all of their summer departures.
Liverpool and Manchester United went all ‘Freaky Friday‘. United are now in the thick of the Champions League chase while Liverpool battle mid-table obscurity. Everton finished fifth last season and cannot buy a win at the moment despite the efforts of largely the same cast as last season. Heck, West Ham United were almost relegated last season and they sat fourth at Christmas!
The few things that have gone to script have been Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal in their eternal battle for fourth place while Chelsea and Manchester City capping the table. Even these ‘constants‘ have hit bumps in the road though, with Newcastle United and Tottenham both beating Chelsea and Arsenal beating City at the Etihad.
The very overdrawn point I am getting to is that the cliche ‘there are no easy games at this level‘ has rarely been more appropriate.
One of the greatest things about football is that every team has something to play for. There are three major objectives for Premier League sides. Win the league, reach the top four and do not get relegated. Usually at this point in the season we have a pretty good idea of who will obtain their objectives, but it seems like every team is still in contention. While not all twenty teams are fighting for the title, the vast majority are fighting for something.
Who will win these crucial battles? Let us find out in the most recent edition of …..
FACT TIME!
Over the past five seasons:
- Only Wigan Athletic have gone from 20th to safety this late in the season.
- Four times the team in 17th has been relegated while the team in 18th has managed to stay up.
- Burnley are currently 17th while Hull City are 18th.
- The team in 4th at this point in the season has never finished 4th come the end of it. Three times they have dropped out of the top four.
- No team in third place has fallen out of the top four by the end of the season.
- Four of the last five teams leading the league after 22 games have won the title with last year being the exception with Arsenal.
- 67.3% of the time, the table after game 22 accurately identifies the teams that will win the title, qualify for champions league and be relegated.
So what do all of these numbers tell us? Well, if statistics decided the league table it would look like this at the end of the season:
- Champions – Chelsea
- Champions League – Manchester City, Southampton, Arsenal
- Relegated – Burnley, Queens Park Rangers, Leicester City
Fortunately for fans, especially of the recently promoted sides, computers do not run the Premier League. Instead, we are having one of the most competitive seasons in recent memory. The difference between 3rd and 7th in the table is just six points. The difference between 12th and 20th? Also six points.
If you consider that all you need to earn six points is win two matches, that means fourteen teams are vying for either a Champions League spot or safety. Add in the title chasing sides, separated by only five points, and a whopping sixteen of twenty possible teams are still within reach of their objectives.
How does this season match up with seasons past? Are there usually this many teams contending this late in the season? Let’s delve into it with a second-helping of …
FACT TIME!!!
With ‘contending‘ meaning within six points of their objective.
At this point in the season:
- The fifteen year average for contending teams is 11.9.
- This year there are sixteen contending teams.
- That is the second highest in the history of the Premier League only behind …
- … last year when seventeen teams were still contending.
- The past two years have therefore had thirty-three teams contending, the same amount as the previous three years combined.
The fact is we are living in an era where competitive balance and parity are nearing their peak. Why now though? What has happened in the last few years that has caused this increase in contention? Financial Fair Play (FFP)?
Instituted in the 2011/12 season, FFP limits the amount by which clubs are allowed to operate in debt. For the Premier League this means that no team can run a three year deficit of more than £105 million, or £35 million a year.
While the addition of what is basically a soft salary cap has not necessarily halted spending. It has forced all clubs to sell before they buy. Yes, Chelsea brought in Diego Costa and Cesc Fabregas in the summer but they had to sell Kevin de Bruyne, Juan Mata, and let Frank Lampard go to make the numbers work.
Manchester City were restricted as well and had to sell Alvaro Negredo, a player Manuel Pellegrini wanted to keep, to fund their signing of Eliaquim Mangala. The big boys are being reigned in and it is only a matter of time before the rest of the pack catches up to them. FFP is not the only reason the gap is closing though. Perhaps the biggest unmentioned factor is the globalisation of scouting.
Going back to my earlier example of Southampton, they sold five players for about £95 million and brought in their replacements for about £60 million, and improved at every position. Scouting is not the same game anymore.
No longer do the biggest clubs automatically have the best scouting networks, because every club has a global network called the internet. There are thousands of scouting videos on YouTube for players all over the world, sites that keep track of player contracts and statistics, video games like FIFA and Football Manager that have near encyclopedic representations of players strengths, weaknesses and even their preferred sock length!
Scouting used to be all about finding players before anyone else could and now information on any player can be learned with a cursory Google search. There is obviously no substitute for seeing players play, but now everyone knows which players they want to target before it ever gets to that point. This technological advancement has leveled the playing field to an extent that cannot be understated.
So whether it be the first signs of success of FFP or a testament to the increased globalisation of scouting, it is not only possible, but accurate to claim that we are, quite literally, witnessing the most competitive era in Premier League history.
