PL wealth on display in overpowered relegation battle
8 min
Football expert Lars Sivertsen takes a closer look at the relegation battle in the Premier League, and predicts a very tight battle for survival.
By Lars Sivertsen, Football Expert for Betsson
There was a passage of play in this weekend’s relegation six-pointer between Southampton and Leeds that caught my eye. Weston McKennie won the ball high up the pitch for Leeds, tried to play a ball to Brenden Aaronson who couldn’t quite control it. Southampton cleared it and it ended up at the feet of their wide forward Kamaldeen Sulemana, who casually skipped away from an opponent and found Paul Onuachu – who tried a speculative shot from range. It caught my eye not because any great football had been produced, aside from perhaps the neat footwork from Sulemana, but because of the names involved.
Quite mad
Weston McKennie had been signed from Juventus, where he was a regular part of the team, in January. Brenden Aaronsen cost 25 million this summer and arrived from RB Salzburg, one of Europe’s premier talent factories, and had been tracked by far bigger clubs than Leeds before he joined. Kamaldeen Sulemana had drawn the interest of some of the biggest clubs in Europe before he joined Rennes in the summer for 2021, for a reported 20 million euros. Though in and out of the team at Rennes, but this season he had more successful dribbles per 90 minutes on the pitch in Ligue 1 than Kylian Mbappe, Lionel Messi and Neymar. Paul Onuachu, the six foot seven tall Nigerian striker, was the top scorer in the Belgian top division when Southampton signed him – and had finished both top scorer and player of the year in that division in 2021. Welcome to the relegation battle of the Premier League. It’s quite, quite mad.
Chelsea naturally grabbed most of the headlines in January when they spent more than every club in Serie A, La Liga and the Bundesliga combined. “The Super League is here, it’s called the Premier League”, cried most of Twitter. And not without justification, the numbers involved were pretty crazy. At the same time though, an inexperienced and excitable chairman backed by a giant investment firm losing the run of himself a bit in the transfer market, well, that doesn’t feel all that unfamiliar. Wealthy owners of a wealthy Premier League club spend a ton of money. Eh. We’ve been here before. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Big names at the bottom
Personally, if I tend to think that if you want to witness the power of this fully manned and operational super league, you want to take a look at this season’s relegation battle, And look specifically of the profile of players the teams who are struggling have still managed to attract.
We mentioned Weston McKennie, who swapped a fairly regular starting berth at Italian giants Juventus for a relegation battle with Leeds United. Leeds also dropped over 35 million pounds on Hoffenheim’s Georginio Rutter. And Maximilian Wöber left RB Salzburg, who were in the Champions League group stage this season, to join Leeds.
Big games to relegation scrapping
Southampton, in addition to the aforementioned Onuachu and Sulemana, added Mislav Orsic from Dinamo Zagreb. Even if you don’t take a keen interest in the Croatian top division, that name should sound familiar to you: He played for Croatia in their World Cup semi final against Argentina, and he has in recent years scored a hat-trick against Tottenham to knock them out of the Europa League, a winning goal against West Ham in the Europa League group stages and this season a winning goal against Chelsea in the Champions League group stages.
Wolves already sport a cluster of Portuguese internationals whom bigger clubs have had their eye on. In January they added Spanish international Pablo Sarabia and Brazilian forward Joao Gomez, who won the South American Champions League, the Copa Libertadores, a few months ago with Flamengo. Nottingham Forest, still not fully out of the woods, casually picked up multiple Champions League winning goalkeeper Keylor Navas because their first choice goalkeeper got injured. They also spent 20 million on Brazilian midfielder Danilo, who is just 21 but has already won the Copa Libertadores twice. His teammate Gustavo Scarpa also joined Nottingham Forest, after being voted player of the year in Brazil’s Serie A last season.
Different
The point is this, these are some serious footballers. And some of these are players who would have been on the radars of pretty big and ambitious clubs around Europe. Clubs from continental Europe who are Champions League regulars or aiming for that level have gotten used to being outgunned in the transfer market by Premier League clubs – but not the ones who are at risk of going down. This development has happened gradually, then suddenly. And to illustrate what a different world this is, let’s have a look at who the teams in the relegation battle were signing 10 and 20 years ago.
On the first day of 2013, Wigan Athletic, Reading and QPR took up the bottom three spots in the Premier League. Wigan signed Austrian midfielder Paul Scharner on loan from Hamburger SV, and Honduran wild man Roger Espinoza from Kansas City FC. Reading signed Stephen Kelly from Fulham and Nick Blackman from Sheffield United, as well as Hope Akpan from Crawley Town.
So very different
Harry Redknapp’s free-spending QPR were slightly more adventurous, adding Christopher Samba from Anzhi Makhachkala (reportedly on an eye-watering salary), as well as Loic Remy from Marseille and both Jermaine Jenas and Andros Townsend from Tottenham. Also worrying about relegation that winter was Sunderland, who signed Danny Graham from Swansea and Alfred N’Diaye from Bursaspor. Aston Villa started the year in 16th, so they turned to the transfer market and signed Yacouba Sylla from Clermont Foot and Simon Dawkins on loan from Tottenham.
These were not all bad players, far from it, but the point is that 10 years ago teams battling relegation weren’t signing first-teamers from Juventus, Champions League-winning goalkeepers from PSG or Copa Libertadores-winning Brazilians.
Go back ten more years to 2003, and the picture is even more different from what we’re seeing now. The transfer window had only just been introduced. Perhaps Fulham, 16th in the table as the new year began, hadn’t fully got their heads around the new concept, as they signed no one at all that January. Though in fairness to them perhaps they didn’t need to, as they climbed out of the bottom and finished a more comfortable 14th in the end that season. Bolton Wanderers were in a perilous 17th place at the start of the year, and showed some more ingenuity as they added Pierre-Yves André on loan from Nantes as well as Salva Ballesta, who had been frozen out at Valencia. Sunderland brought in Mart Poom and Talal El Karkouri. West Bromwich Albion were in the relegation zone going into 2013, yet their only move in January was signing Nigerian left back Ifeanyi Udeze on loan from PAOK. West Ham, bottom of the league, brought in Lee Bowyer from Leeds, Les Ferdinand from Tottenham and Rufus Brevett on loan from Fulham.
No bad teams?
Again, not necessarily bad footballers by any stretch, but what we’re seeing now is very different. Inevitably, in a 20 team league, there will be some teams who lose more than they win. But looking at the overall quality of the teams, the standard in the relegation battle in the Premier League is just remarkable. Three out of 20 have to go down, obviously, but I’m certainly finding it very difficult to pick out a team who I think are poor, not up to it and who won’t be missed when they depart the league come May. Expected goals-numbers would point to Bournemouth as the worst team in the league this season, and by some margin, and I wouldn’t disagree with that. But they’ve also shown in some games that they have a certain resilience to them. And Bournemouth, for their part, added fleet-footed winger Dango Ouattara as well as the Ivorian attacking midfielder Hamed Junior Traore from Sassuolo this January. Not to mention Illya Zabarnyi, the Ukrainian central defender who at the age of 20 already has 24 caps for his country. Again, a player far bigger clubs around Europe than Bournemouth had their eye on.
If you want to worry about England’s Premier League becoming Europe’s de facto Super League, the relegation battle is where you look. It’s not news that the richest clubs in England can blow everyone else out of the water, that’s been the case for a good while now. What is more new is that teams who may not even stay up are picking up players who would otherwise be heading to Champions League participants from other countries. Whether this is good for the sport as a whole becomes a whole other discussion. In the short term, it will certainly make for an extraordinary spectacle as a number of very good teams fight it out to avoid relegation to the Championship.
Odds to be relegated:
Bournemouth: 1.32
Southampton: 1.32
Everton: 2.10
Leeds: 2.75
Nottingham Forest: 3.00
Wolves: 4.25
West Ham: 7.00
Leicester City: 8.00
Crystal Palace: 10.00
