People love watching chaos. Not in the world or in their own lives mind you because there’s something underrated and beautiful about having a sense of control over your own life. But more a controlled sense of chaos in their mediums of escape; whether it be TV serials or the football.
And this season, nothing has defined chaos and a lack of sense more than the Championship. Well, the 2. Bundesliga does come close but there has been no league on this planet that has been the personification of chaotic nonsense like the way the Championship has been. Take Fulham; they’ve lifted the Championship trophy, became the first team to score 100 goals in twenty years, have a sensational Aleksandr Mitrovic who broke the scoring record with 43 goals and have scored five or more goals on seven occasions this season.
Yet despite all that, Bournemouth led the league for a nice chunk of the season and still managed to stay about three or four points behind the Cottagers until their recent dip of form. Even then, the Cherries were far from safe in second as Nottingham Forest sat behind them and on their heels with Huddersfield, Sheffield United and Luton Town all in the same boat. But move back to Forest because the Reds endured a start so terrible, that many expected them to be relegated.
How bad? Zero wins in their first seven games of the season and yet come the end of the season, they were two wins away from leapfrogging Bournemouth into the direct promotion spot. But fate wasn’t on their side, yet again, as a 1-0 loss to Cherries meant that those hopes were dashed although they do have a playoff final ahead of them. But all that is besides the point because what really does matter is from the three teams relegated last season, two of them are in the top six while one won the league title.
Move back a year and all three teams that were relegated at the end of the 2019/20 season were in the top six with Norwich City and Watford finishing in the direct promotion spots. Move back another season and two of the three were in the top six and the trend continues with only serious financial problems affecting the relegated teams from competing again. That trend has been the only consistent thing about the Championship and it all stems from one single thing; Parachute payments.
You see, the Premier League, in their everlasting love for the lower tiers of English football, hand out parachutes to the teams getting relegated so that the financial pinch is not that hard on them. It means that a relegated team manages to clean up £100 million for the season they spent in the top tier, then about £40 million for the first season in the second-tier and around £30 million for the second. That’s why Norwich City, and not Manchester City or Liverpool, are arguably the best run club in English football.
Crazy notion that, right? But think about it because the Canaries effectively spent each season going up and down, up and down, up and down. In the last ten years, they’ve spent three consecutive seasons in the top tier, three consecutive seasons in the second tier before realising what they had to do and since then, the last four have been them yo-yoing between the two. They’ve been relegated again and all bets should be on them finishing in an automatic promotion spot next season, otherwise why keep Dean Smith at the helm?
And right there is the biggest problem that the recently promoted will have because for all the hoopla of the most expensive final and the biggest prize money in a final, it means nothing. Even with the £100 odd million that Fulham, Bournemouth and the promotion play-off final winner will get is pennies to what a Premier League side will be able to spend and that's even a team who barely survived like Leeds United.
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