Ian Wright and Gary Neville have voiced their concerns over the gulf between the Championship and the Premier League – one that Leicester City have had trouble bridging.
The Foxes looked for all the world an established Premier League club after promotion in 2014 saw them win the scramble to stay in the division then really stabilise over nine seasons.
However, while relegation in 2023 was quickly reversed the following campaign, this season they have struggled again and look set to join the other promoted teams, Ipswich Town and Southampton, in going straight back down.
That would be the second year running the teams coming up have not stuck around, with Luton Town, Burnley and Sheffield United all lasting just one year. This term the Blades and the Clarets are in a good position to yo-yo back into the top flight.
It seems the ‘cliff edge’ between the two divisions is now said to be more than £100m in TV revenue alone and is in danger of being unnavigable.
“We should be absolutely worried,” said Wright in the latest episode of The Overlap. “There are 17 teams that are continually getting money because three teams are coming in, whether it’s Leeds, Sheffield United or Burnley or whoever, and then they go again.
“These 17 teams are continually getting stronger, the middle teams even. Look where Villa are now. Look at Brighton, look at Fulham having a go, Brentford, Bournemouth. All these teams are getting so much better than the three teams who are coming up.
“You look at Wolves this season. They have been so bad this season but they have had nothing to worry about.”
Neville pointed to the financial disparity between the Premier League and the rest. A Premier League club has a guaranteed income of £100m due to broadcast revenue whereas a team in the Championship can bank on just over £5m.
There is a parachute payments system in place, which helped Enzo Maresca’s City last season, but the EFL argue that is making the problem worse, partly because it accentuates the gap between the haves and have nots in the Championship.
Neville can see promoted teams panic about how much they can spend in case they go down and face the financial consequences – and an anomaly like Nottingham Forest, who wrote big cheques to beat the system, but still almost got relegated and were then hit by penalties for breaking Premier League profit and sustainability rules.
Leicester have also hit a brick wall by trying to bridge the differences between income in the Premier League and Championship at the same time as not breaking rules.
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Neville said: “There’s a football question (about why teams are going straight back down) but there is also the financial disparity between what’s happening in the Championship and Premier League and we’ve talked about this for years.”
He added: “It’s got to the point now where clubs who come up – Nottingham Forest spent a hundred-odd million pounds – you have those wages when you sink back. There are some levels to soften the impact but the risks you have to take to stay in mean that if you go back down with a parachute there is still a risk of going under financially.
“You’re frightened then to go for the risk. What you’re seeing now is teams coming up and thinking, ‘There’s no point in going for it that much, we’ll try to outperform it and then at least we’re not going under financially.’
“It’s getting to a point where the gap is getting bigger.”
EFL chairman Rick Parry told our sister title StokeonTrentLive recently: “Our starting point was to say that the big challenge for everyone in the Premier League and the Championship is the cliff edge between the two divisions, which is in excess of £100m. It’s a challenge for the teams coming up and coming down, which is ostensibly why you need a parachute.
“Our proposal for revenue sharing – the 75-25 formula and introduction of steeper merit rates within the Premier League and the Championship – would have halved the cliff edge to £50m. Our position has been that if you halve the cliff edge, why do you need a parachute?
“If we solve the issue systemically and properly there wouldn’t be a need for a parachute.
“Having said that, we don’t want clubs to go bust when they come down. That’s not the objective. We’re not going into the debate saying parachutes can be zero – we think they are way too high at the moment.
“It’s really interesting that if you look at the German system, they split the media revenues 80-20. You can’t even define what the split for media revenues is here. There isn’t a fixed percentage because it all flows from the parachute payments.”
