The Death of the "Big Six"

Even getting to the Final of League Cup again was a bigger deal than you might think. Matthew explains why.

The signs have been there for a while. But a first double in nearly a century over that endlessly amusing Trafford Park shit show, followed by confirmation that Villa might just be the real deal, seems as good a time as any to say it in words of one syllable.

The “Big Six” is dead.

Well, if not dead, then at least sat in a nursing home, food dribbling down its chin, in a puddle of its own piss, waiting to be put out of its misery.

You can understand why no-one's pointed it out. I mean, we've all had much more important things on our mind after Wembley. But what's largely gone under the radar is the significance of us even getting to the League Cup final this season in the wider context of recent English football history.

Before that, no club outside the supposed big six had made it to two domestic cup finals in the last ten years. We did it in the space of three years. And guess what? Next weekend one of Crystal Palace or Aston Villa are guaranteed to repeat the trick. Buses and all that. It might seem an insignificant achievement, but I'd argue it's a minor surface tremor that reveals much more significant underlying shifts in the tectonic plates of English football.

Given how Villa played at the weekend, and with only City left in the FA Cup, it might just be that both domestic cups go to one of the “other” 14 this season. That would be the first time in 35 years. If so, it would also be the second time the FA Cup has escaped the dirty half-dozen in the last five years. Before that it had been twice in 36 years.

In other words, things have begun to shift noticeably in the last three to five years. If you look at League finishes, a similar picture emerges.

At the time of writing, the league positions of the scumbag six were 1, 2, 4, 7, 14, 16. That's by far their worst set of positions in the last 10 years. Considerably worse even than the year Leicester won it. One simple way to measure this is to just tot up the number of combined places outside the top six that those clubs finished.

As we can see, a similar shifting trend emerges here in the last three to five years after the years of complete big-six domination that followed the Leicester season.

There's been a lot of talk that this has been a terrible Premier League season. Boring. Mediocre. It seems to me that it's neither of those. Instead, it's the year when the mythical “big” six proved mortal, all of them beatable on the day by any club in the top dozen. Or in the case of Spurs and Man Utd, anyone in the top 17. If the media presents that as a bad season, we should a) not be surprised and b) resolutely refuse to go along with that narrative.

The more important questions are: 1. Why has it happened? 2. Is it likely to persist?

To answer the first of these, there are specific factors at play at all the clubs concerned, but one common thread is the way that serial mismanagement seems to be finally catching up with clubs. Chelsea, Man United, and Spurs all fall into that category, paying the price for a series of ill-judged managerial appointments and sackings, together with poor player recruitment, appallingly so in the case of Man Utd and Chelsea. Meanwhile, Man City fatally failed to refresh an ageing squad. You just can't get away with these mistakes anymore, which brings us to the second reason.

At the same time, there's no doubt that there's been an all-round levelling up in coaching, tactics, conditioning, youth development, and data-informed decision-making that has benefited not only the best-run, most forward-thinking clubs like Brentford and Brighton, but also Fulham, Bournemouth, Villa, Forest, and (finally released from the Ashley-Bruce purgatory) ourselves. Equally, the financial pull and prestige of the Premier League means these clubs can recruit the best young international talent. Throw in some generous overseas investment, and these factors have lifted the mid-table sides and closed the gap on a club like Man City that used to be light years ahead in all these areas.

Finally, there's PSR, which might seem curious given that it's normally seen as a conspiracy that favours the big clubs. This isn't to dispute that it's a barrier for aspirational clubs - mind you, without it, we wouldn't have had the pleasure of Big Dan scoring at Wembley or wor Jakey wheeling away after his assist - but there’s no doubt that it's also acting as a brake on those big clubs, even if Chelsea still find laughable ways around it (as Andy showed yesterday). The need to sell to buy and the end of limitless spending apply to everyone, those clubs included. There's a reason no-one can afford Isak.

If we accept these factors, then there's no reason to believe that things are going to suddenly reverse, especially not while Spurs, Man Utd, and Chelsea are locked in managerial death spirals that ironically would only be sustained by European trophy success - the Ten Haag paradox as one columnist put it this week. For Chelsea and Man Utd, ludicrous player contracts and amortisation costs are also a crippling weight they can't shed.

Meanwhile, the deliberate creation of a Champions League money making scheme designed to perpetuate the stranglehold of the big six is in danger of coming back to bite them in the arse. Villa will make £70m this year, much more than we did last year. If we're able to qualify the same awaits us. We won't be stuffed by a difficult group draw this time because the whole system has been changed to guarantee more games and increase the ease of qualifying for the quarter-finals. At the same time, two or three of the supposedly big clubs will miss out, creating a wonderful vicious (virtuous) circle.

Oh and finally it's worth looking at the actual domestic trophy-winning success in the last ten years: Spurs 0, Arsenal 2, Chelsea 2, Man U 4, Liverpool 5, Man City 13. That's not a big six, more like a big two and a half.

Maybe it was all just a media myth in the first place? Surely not…

Matthew Philpotts