Regression is the story for many of the Premier League’s big clubs this autumn as extreme wealth warps judgments in the transfer market and the religion of ‘entertaining’ football veers towards brainwashing.
Fans of a certain vintage will look at the table today and see the 1970s, when Derby County, Ipswich Town and Nottingham Forest were all contenders. Among those going backwards after 11 games are teams we have come to see as automatic top-six citizens: Arsenal, Spurs, Liverpool, Manchester City (six wins from 11 matches) and arguably Manchester United, who spent £150m this summer to arrest last season’s alarming decline.
This pattern is unlikely to last until May, by which time greater squad depth and urgent regrouping will have pushed the rich back towards the top. But the natural order is taking mighty blows.
Southampton and West Ham, both in the top four, have endeavoured to add match-winning and crowd-pleasing talent without abandoning defensive structure – which is not just about the back-four blocking well. Arsenal are the prime example of a side whose midfielders seem to think it would be vulgar to help out a full-back or centre-half.
At Swansea on Sunday, poor Calum Chambers was torn to shreds by Jefferson Montero and nothing was done to help him, either by Arsene Wenger, the manager, or Arsenal’s midfielders, who spent much of the game dancing the ball back to the opposition.
Each struggling club has its specific tale. Manchester City’s reverses in Europe have corroded the team’s confidence and Manuel Pellegrini’s light-touch management appears unsuited to a group of players who relaxed after their previous Premier League title win, in 2012.
But deeper trends are emerging. In the Champions League, England’s four representatives have won five of their 16 group stage matches. For the world’s richest league this is a disturbing ratio.
Football’s merger with PlayStation styles of play has heaped pressure on scouts and recruiters to favour showbiz players. In Spain, Real Madrid and Barcelona target proven individual world-class talent to add to a strong base. In England, Spurs attempt to replace Gareth Bale with seven mid-ranking names and Liverpool fill the void left by Luis Suarez by gambling on quantity rather than quality. At £20m, Lazar Markovic is less laser than flickering candle.
In panic mode, United signed Radamel Falcao and Angel Di Maria, adding only Daley Blind and Marcos Rojo (after Luke Shaw) to a defensive unit coming out of the Rio Ferdinand-Nemanja Vidic era.
The big clubs spend big and indiscriminately simply because they can. They gamble in the £10m-£30m range, mostly on forwards and midfielders, few of whom seem to see themselves as parts of an 11-man organism, attacking and defending as one.
The exception, naturally, is Chelsea, where Jose Mourinho has won his battle to make Eden Hazard, Oscar and Willian play with rear-view mirrors, while adding rigour with Cesc Fabregas and Nemanja Matic.
No Premier League behemoth can say they have bought major defensive ballast, or supplemented individual world-class talent to the back line. City signed Eliaquim Mangala but after a bright start he developed culture shock. The less glamorous clubs can now see that Liverpool, Spurs, Arsenal and United are no longer hard to score against. Swansea (who are fifth), the so-called mini-Arsenal, made a policy decision to be tougher in their own third of the field, because they saw how much they could gain with a better balance between defence and attack.
So decadence is undermining some of the big names. The pressure to spray-spend £100m each summer is not yielding good results. It brings problems of balance and integration. It turns the heat on managers if the first 10 results are underwhelming. And it plays to a delusion English football is increasingly falling prey to. The paranoia is that unless games are emotionally exhausting and aesthetically thrilling, rotten tomatoes will be lobbed by fans and pundits.
At the summit, Mourinho is showing Premier League clubs how to advance and retreat as a single fighting force. Chelsea are in another galaxy to the rest. Premier League campaigns are not meant to be over by Christmas, but this one threatens to be. The good bit is the glimpse of the 1970s: the imagined democracy. For retro in the middle, read regression at the top.
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