Competitive advantage of Premier League Teams

 I still remember the early days of the English Premier League. Leeds United were the first defending champion. Man U's first rival for the title was Aston Villa, and it was not a given that it would win the title: they were breaking a title drought almost as long as Liverpool's 30 years.

After Man U won 4 titles in 5 years, it seemed that they were set for a period of utter dominance. Blackburn won the one title they missed during those 5 years, but they failed to establish a dynasty, after Jack Walker's money ran out and Kenny Dalglish quit. Newcastle United could have established a dynasty, but Kevin Keegan lost his nerve and quit. Kenny Dalglish took over from him and also failed to establish Newcastle as a top club.

This was the cue for Arsenal to storm to the top of English league. Blackburn Rovers were probably similar to what Liverpool would have been if Graeme Souness had not messed it up. But Arsenal, who should have been an above average club, spent the next 7 seasons wrestling with Man United for supremacy in the English Premier League. That's because they brought something totally different to the table.

At this point in time, the roles of 3 clubs should be highlighted: Middlesborough were a club who thought they could build a great dynasty. They hired Bryan Robson as a manager, convinced that he was destined to be a great manager. Then they signed Fabrizio Ravanelli, Juninho and Emerson, thinking they could play sexy football. That didn't work: they spent 1 season in the top flight, and reached the 2 cup finals, lost them both and were relegated at the end of the season. But they were one club who spearheaded the transition of the English Premier League into something more cosmopolitan.

Another club which attempted this was Chelsea, and they had more success. They brought in Ruud Gullit and got him to be the manager. They brought in Gianfranco Zola, Gianluca Vialli, Roberto Di Matteo, Dan Petrescu and Frank Lebouef. They were the first major side with a major foreign contigent.

But Arsenal topped them off by having a team whose core was practically foreign. Bergkamp and Anelka in front, Vieira and Petiti in the middle. A lot of the best players from Rioch's and Graham's time at the club were retained and Wenger brought out the best from them: the famous back four of Adam, Bould, Dixon and Winterburn. David Seaman, Ian Wright, Paul Merson and Ray Parlour.

Arsene Wenger brought several new innovations to the club, like improved nutrition and sports science and better scouting networks. For a while, he was very good at developing youth players, if you considered Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira to be youths. Between 2001 and 2004 they were undisputably the best team in the land, if you overlooked how they inexplicably let Man U in to steal the title from them in 2003.

Unfortunately those years would never be repeated. The greatest achievement of Man U was that they outlasted many of their rivals – Leeds, Aston Villa, Blackburn Rovers, Newcastle, Arsenal, and even Chelsea.

Arsenal's astounding success during Arsene Wenger's first decade in charge was due to his introducing new ideas that weren't yet adopted by everybody. There's a small window of time when relatively small clubs can change the world and vastly outperform themselves. Consider that the first few big clubs in the English league were Preston, Sunderland and Aston Villa. Eventually, it makes sense that a club situated in the middle of a vast football heartland would dominate. Eventually it would not be a surprise that the biggest clubs of the Manchester – Liverpool region would be the biggest clubs of all, and the satellite towns – Bolton, Blackburn, Burnley, Preston – would just fade away.

Or think about how Holland were briefly the greatest football country in the world when they invented total football, and how Ajax Amsterdam dominated the European Cup in the early 1970s.

For a while, Bolton Wanderers would have some astounding level of success, reaching the top 10 4 times in a row, and that's because of a data revolution, or Sam Allardyce's methods of managing – signing aging stars who can no longer cut it at the highest level, but would excel in a mid-table team, practicing set pieces, and being ultra-defensive.

Chelsea Football club changed English football in a big way: there had always been rich sides that were bankrolled by big patrons, but this was the time when the millionaires transitioned into the billionaires. This would be the beginning of plutocrat football, of football clubs being billionaire playthings. To be sure, AC Milan in the previous decade in a way bought their success, but that was balanced out by Arrigo Sacchi being a genuine football innovator. Abramovich's entry into the arena was the beginning of the end of football being a people's game. It would eventually become an ogilopoly of the biggest clubs, and smaller clubs would eventually be shut out forever. In fact, Leicester City's famous league win would be celebrated because it was a millionaire's club, not a billionaire's club.

Chelsea Football club would have a new trick up its sleeve: the billionaire owner. When he hired Jose Mourinho, who would annihilate the rest of the league with a combination of having the most expensive players and parking the bus. It wasn't that straightforward: the first year, Hernan Crespo Veron, Wayne Bridge and Adrian Mutu joined the club, and these did not turn out to be great players for the club.

When a rich owner takes over the club, there are a variety of outcomes. There could be a short-lived bump in fortunes, as was the case for Newcastle and Blackburn, when their sponsors were tired of them. There were other clubs which had short-lived sponsors. FC Anzhi Makhachkala were a spectacular example, when they spent lavishly on Samuel Eto'o's salary for 1 year, before deciding they were done with this toy. Middlesborough were supposed to be the next big thing, but they could hardly establish themselves in the premier league. There was a time when Aston Villa and Everton were aiming to be an established part of the Big 4 but neither of them really made that leap. And let's not forget that period of time when Sheffield Wednesday, Bradford, Ipswich and most infamously, Leeds spent beyond their means and all of them became insolvent.

There was this persistent question of how Chelsea would continue to maintain their dominance after the first few years of success. Apparently Roman Abramovich is still interested in funding the club after all these years, and anyway they managed to bootstrap themselves into some kind of real football operation, as opposed to other instances when a rich sponsor has just split and left the club in a bust.

I think that one of the greatest achievements of Alex Ferguson was that he managed to claw his empire back after Arsenal and then Chelsea threatened to knock him off his perch. There were years of dodgy acquisitions, like Eric Djemba Djemba, Roy Carroll, Veron, Quinton Fortune, Laurent Blanc. Somehow, he hit a purple patch of good players, getting in Evra, Rooney, Ronaldo, Vidic, Saha and Van Der Sar. Michael Owen and Owen Hargreaves were good players when fit, which is never.

The titles that Man U won in 2011 and 2013 probably were not considered part of his third great team. IT was probably a transition period between the fall of Man U and the rise of Man City. But some of the great players from that side were still there. They grabbed a Van Persie still at the height of his powers.

There are clubs that somehow manage to overperform relative to their means and spending, and that is because they bring something special to the table. Maybe they have special methods and techniques. Arsenal's superpower was their free-wheeling attacking style, better scouting and better nutrition and fitness. However, these advantages were neutralised with time, and it's probably a testament to Arsene Wenger's ability as a coach that up to 10 years after the dismantling of the invincibles side, he still managed to be able to get the club into the Champion's league year after year. That said, the overwhelming feeling was that they had hit a ceiling and they would never break that ceiling of squeaking into the top 4 and getting knocked out of the round of 16 year after year. When their stranglehold on the champion's league place lapsed, especially after losing out to Leicester City for a league title, there was nowhere to go but down.

When a club loses a big chunk of its special power, it could go into a downward spiral. Arsenal does not have many conspicuous advantages – it used to be an over-performing club, and now it's regressed to the mean, and maybe it's still expected to be an over-performing club. Maybe this is why its relationship with the fans has become so toxic.

Manchester United's special power is their fanbase and Alex Ferguson. For a while, even with the Glazers in charge, Manchester United still managed to be very successful. And this was because their previous success bought them a fanbase that they could rely on to have a healthy transfer kitty. But with the departure of Alex Ferguson, one of the wheels would fall off.

Liverpool is another club that could punch above their weight, owing to their history. Their other superpower, allegedly responsible for anywhere up to 6 of their European trophies, is how Anfield is a ground that no opposing team really wants to play in. Perhaps they also got lucky with their recruitment, when the great 2009 edition had Mascherano, Gerrard, Torres, Reina and Xabi Alonso in their team. Or the 2014 edition that had Raheem Sterling, Daniel Sturridge and Luis Suarez. Jurgen Klopp has done a great job with Liverpool leading up to the pandemic. They managed to win the Champion's League and the league, and narrowly miss out on a league title in spite of finishing with more than 95 points. But the pandemic will deprive them of the full power of Anfield, and also you feel that a natural cycle has ended: there were signs of fatigue in the 20/21 season, even if they did manage a heroic effort to get into the champion's league place.

Or even consider Tottenham Hotspur, who got lucky a few times, when they got players like Luca Modric, Berbatov and Gareth Bale. Where they got very lucky was with the appointment of Mauricio Pochettino as a coach. He implemented a hard running and intensely physical style of play that got Tottenham into the Champion's league places for a few years running. Then eventually, his team succumbed to burn out, and for some strange reason, Daniel Levy fired him. Well I'm not sure when if ever Tottenham will get back into the champion's league places but I'm not holding my breath.

One really interesting club is Leicester City, and maybe the Thai owners are really smart. They started off trying to get Sven Goran Eriksson as their coach, and fired him after that didn't work. Then they got Nigel Pearson who got Leicester promoted and then saved them from relegation in the EPL. Then somehow they got Leicester to win the EPL in the next season. After a few missteps in the wake of that unlikely triumph, they got Brendan Rodgers as manager, and he's kept them in the Europa league places ever since, and they might have a good tilt at the Champion's League places.

Now, we'll come to the plutocrats. Chelsea's superpower is their ruthlessness. I don't really know how Chelsea managed to get around the financial fair play rules, but it seems that they're one of the big clubs and they can get whoever they want. They're a bit like Real Madrid: they're not going to be cuddly or loveable, but they'll find a way to win trophies, and they'll sack their manager at a drop of a hat. It seems to work. They grabbed Jose Mourinho once he left Real Madrid, and he managed to get them 1 league title. Then he faltered the next season, and he had to go, and Conte managed another league title, then Conte had to go. Then there was another rebuilding to be done, and while there was a transfer embargo going on, they got Frank Lampard to do a job, and he did a relatively OK job of getting them into a champion's league place. And when Chelsea were again able to get more players in, for whatever reason, Frank Lampard wasn't able to get them to gel, and that was the cue for him to get fired and for Thomas Tuchel to take his place. Thomas Tuchel has done well so far, getting Chelsea into the Champion's League places, the FA Cup final and winning the Champion's league. It's not easy to have any kind of success at all when it seems that Man City is hoarding all the trophies, but

And that leaves us Man City. I don't know how they get around the financial fair play rules. I'm thinking that if they were allowed to participate in the Champion's league, instead of being banned for a year.... to be sure, Man City had spent lavishly on players in the past, but not really during Guardiola's time. There were big purchases for players, to be sure, and there was a very very good player in every position, but they were not going to break the bank for a real star, and in some ways, that's because football has become less individualistic and star oriented. But they could be acquiring Harry Kane and Jack Grealish in the same season and that could change.

They've been absolutely ruthless since Pep Guardiola cracked the code of building a winning EPL team. There are some people who say that Pep Guardiola could not manage a lower league team, and that he would flounder trying to impose his high-falutin ideas on lesser players. That may be true, but he's not supposed to work with lesser teams, he's supposed to get into the seat at an elite team, and use all the other teams to mop the floor.

He came out of nowhere... I only took notice of Pep Guardiola when he kicked Man U's ass in the 2009 champion's league final. He had barely been in charge of Barcelona when they did the double, and his work had almost immediate impact. He had basically gained that “unfair advantage” that Arsenal had during their glory days, and for the next few years, Barcelona were basically unbeatable. But they won't always be unbeatable, and they won't always have a bumper crop of great players from La Masia. Chelsea and Man City have bottomless pits of money, and somehow they can still build great youth teams.

Man City basically went about courting nobody but him... they put his name right on the seat. Mancini and Pellegrini were basically just warming up the seat for him. Barcelona proved to be too stressful for him to manage, and for whatever reason he couldn't settle at Bayern Munich, so he ended up at Man City. And that gives them an almost unfair advantage by marrying vast resources with a great genius.

Rich people become owners / chairmen of top English clubs for various reasons, but some do it to pump money in and others do it to pump money out. Man City, Chelsea and PSG are clubs which are bankrolled by oil money. On the other hand, Man U and Arsenal started off as big clubs, and then the takeovers have been similar to leveraged buyouts. You pile the debt onto the club, get the club to service the debt, and at the end of the day, you bilk the money from the club.

And then there are still other rich owners of clubs, I don't know what they do it for. They know that they aren't going to win anything with a mid table club, and still they buy it as some kind of a rich man's plaything. Perhaps it's for branding purposes? I don't know why the Venky's group bought Blackburn Rovers. It hasn't been a viable brand name since the relegation just a few years after winning the title.