Can you hear that? Listen closely. If you’re lucky you might just be able to catch the slow demise of top flight football in England.
Over the course of the last decade or longer, the Premier League has modelled itself as a league being divided by a distinct top four.
With the progression of the more recent seasons, what was once a four horse race is now shaping up as a top ten challenge.
This is not to say that a new king will be crowned any time soon, but now there are numerous contenders to the throne all waiting on an opportunity to, in the near future, stamp their authority on the game.
In Australia, for many years you could excuse people for guessing there were only four participants in the Barclays premier league.
One team has made a claim to be the fifth.
Manchester City, armed with a billionaire owner and the backing of footballing critics, started the year flaunting their money in a desperate attempt to break the barrier separating the top four from the rest of the league.
Many will argue the gap has already been narrowed down to a history, and is based no longer on current form. On paper, the possibility to succeed surely warrants Manchester City a temporary visa in top flight football in England.
Fantasy owners can vouch for that with Man City filling a number of teams around the internet, with the likes of Burnley, Stoke and Wolverhampton being dealt the ‘who?’ card.
So what qualifies a team for top flight status?
A history that can shame every opposing team, an arrogant fan base, a stadium that can span beyond the field of vision with an attached cost in figures you or I will never be able to pronounce in pounds or dollars, and finally, a feel for the economic concept ‘if we’ve got it, spend it’.
For years football’s die-hards have rallied with the claim ‘if you’re not with us, you’re nobody’. The support base of English football has quickly become a game of advertising and persuasion.
While off the field fans still enjoy a beer or 16 and display vocal support whilst constantly rejecting the use of seats, on the field the rise of those other Premier league clubs whose names evade me, has begun.
The science behind this change in English football is simple, as the clichéd saying goes ‘all great things come to an end’. Football is not exempt from that theory.
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