Brighton could well be second in the Premier League this time next week. They have been impressive enough to think that Champions League qualification may not be out of the question; they are currently on course for a return to the Europa League.
Chelsea and Tottenham are meanwhile both targeting returns to Europe’s top table: Enzo Maresca’s side sit third in the Premier League table, level on points with Arsenal and Brighton, while Spurs are just three points behind alongside Nottingham Forest and eighth-placed Aston Villa.
Ah, yes, Aston Villa. It’s not going terribly well for them at the moment, is it? Not dismal, but short of the excellent form they were in this time last year as they laid the foundations for their top-four finish. Which raises the question: is qualifying for the Champions League actually harmful to your Premier League form?
On the face of it, there’s some suggestion that it is. Tottenham have appeared in the Champions League in five of the past eight seasons. In four of those seasons where they balanced domestic and continental commitments, they finished lower in the Premier League than they had in achieving qualification in the first place.
MORE ON F365
👉 16 Conclusions on Man City 0-4 Spurs: atrocious Walker and Gundogan, brilliant Kulusevski and Maddison
👉 Good luck Ruben Amorim; Man Utd are ‘a fat, lazy, bloated corpse of a club’
👉 No Salah in Premier League team of the season so far in 2024/25
Newcastle’s fourth place in 2022/23 turned into seventh last season, while Aston Villa have won just two of their eight league games since the Champions League began in September – despite having been more used to the rigours of playing continental football than Newcastle, having reached the Conference League semis last term.
Naturally, going head-to-head with Bayern Munich and Bologna is somewhat tougher than taking on Legia Warsaw and Zrinjski Mostar, and selection decisions are made accordingly. More minutes is put into more key players, and mental and physical fatigue rises.
But there’s an even simpler explanation for why those who break the top four tend to regress from there: it’s because it’s usually the only direction they can realistically go.
Some of you may be familiar with the ‘Sports Illustrated curse’ in American sport, which dictates that a star whose stock had risen sufficiently to get them on the cover of the magazine would inevitably suffer a severe drop in form immediately after publication.
That’s nothing to do with supernatural forces, and everything to do with the fact that only a handful of sportspeople are brilliant enough to remain absolutely superlative for extended periods of time. The majority go through at least some peaks and troughs throughout their careers – and if you’ve had a peak that’s notable enough to get you on the cover of magazines, your fall back to your usual standard will seem that much more severe.
That only goes so far in team sport, particularly one run on such capitalist fervour as football. The financial boost of reaching the Champions League for the first time is substantial, but as nothing compared with longer-term financial powerhouses like Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Manchester United, whose revenues remain several times those of most of their Premier League brethren even in years when they miss out on the Champions League.
That puts a ceiling on the rest that says: yes, sure, you can finish second, third or fourth one year, but you’re probably never going to win the league, and you’re probably not going to be able to stay up there for year upon year.
It become a chicken/egg situation: to build substantial enough revenues to compete, you have to get into the Champions League regularly (as Tottenham have done very well to do). To get into the Champions League regularly, you have to have the spending power. Hell, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United have all struggled to do that at various points despite having the financial advantage.
The big criticism of FFP when it arrived in the 2000s was that it risked creating a closed shop, and that has indeed happened. Chelsea got the Roman Abramovich investment just before it became a factor, while Manchester City built themselves up before things were quite as tight as they are now.
It’s considerably harder for a Newcastle or an Aston Villa to replicate that now; in return, we have also had far fewer Portsmouth and Leeds-like plummets into financial near-oblivion.
So…if Brighton or someone similar manages to get into the Champions League, don’t worry. Your near-inevitable drop back down to upper mid-table was probably going to come anyway. Hooray!
