Premiership-Football League gulf

In English football, the Premiership-Football League gulf is a term used to describe the increase in the financial differences between clubs from the Premier League and The Football League since the First Division clubs broke away to form the Premier League in 1992. Some have argued that this disparity is wider than in other European leagues where the top flight is combined with at least one division below in a league, such as Germany's Bundesliga, Italy's Serie A and Spain's La Liga. It should be noted, however, that England has five tiers of single national divisions, compared to Spain and Italy (two national divisions) and Germany (three).

Since the Premier League began as the FA Premier League at the start of the 1992–93 season, its member teams have received larger amounts of money in TV rights than their Football League colleagues. Prior to the formation of the Premier League, television revenues from top flight matches were shared between the 92 Football League clubs across 4 unified national professional divisions. The break away of 22 clubs to form the Premier League resulted in top flight revenues being shared exclusively between Premier League clubs.cite web | url = http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=4138 | title = Football goes to market | accessdate = 2006-11-21] . The FA Premier League agreed to maintain the promotion and relegation of three clubs with the Football League, but The Football League was now in a far weaker position - without its best clubs and without the clout to negotiate high revenue TV deals. This problem was exacerbated in 2002 when ITV Digital, holder of TV rights for The Football League, went into administration. Many League clubs had invested in ground improvements and the player transfer market with anticipated television funds that never materialized, causing several clubs to enter receivership - most notably Bradford City, who were faced with debts of £36million and almost lost their Football League status as a result.

As a result, financial disparity has been cited as a reason for newly promoted teams finding it increasingly harder to establish themselves in the Premiership, thus worrying more about avoiding relegation than winning the title. The Premiership relegation places have been filled by at least one newly promoted club in all but one of the 13 seasons since its introduction, and in the 1997–98 season all three clubs were relegated. The only exception was the 2001-02 season, in which all three promoted teams survived and as of 2008–09, are still in the Premiership.

The Premier League distributes a small portion of its television revenue to clubs that are relegated from the league in the form of "parachute payments". Starting with the 2006-07 season, these payments are in the amount of £6.5 million over the club's first two seasons in lower leagues.cite web | url = http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1771399,00.html | title = Rich clubs forced to give up a sliver of the TV pie | accessdate = 2006-11-21] Though designed to help teams adjust to the loss of television revenues (the average Premier League team receives £45 million while the average Football League Championship club recevies £1 million), critics maintain that the payments actually widen the gap between teams that have reached the Premiership and those that have not [cite web | url = http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1837801,00.html | title = Why clubs may risk millions for riches at the end of the rainbow | accessdate = 2006-08-13] , leading to the common occurrence of teams returning soon after their relegation. This, however, does not take into account former Premiership mainstays which currently are in The Football League, such as Wimbledon (now defunct), Southampton, Sheffield Wednesday and Leeds United, who were founding members of the Premiership and stayed there for between nine and 12 years before going down, and have yet to return.

The payments have been also criticised as causing Premiership teams to play more cautiously—playing not to lose instead of playing to win—because the threat of relegation means the loss of payments from the television rights. In fact, as of December 2006, the goals-per-game average is only 2.14, the lowest it has ever been in Premiership history and lower than any other professional league in Europe. Steve Bruce, at the time manager of Birmingham City, stated that,

The Curse of Christmas refers to a trend where the team at the bottom of the table at Christmas has been relegated at the end of the season every year except one (2004/05 West Bromwich Albion) since the Premiership started in 1992. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/i/ipswich_town/1726331.stm] The momentous achievement has since been dubbed 'The Great Escape' due to its improbability, particularly as West Brom were still bottom of the league on the morning of the last day of the season.

The last time a top division team had achieved this feat was in 1990-91, when Sheffield United avoided relegation after being bottom of the penultimate pre-Premiership First Division on 25 December 1990. The Blades had not won in their first 16 matches and had less than 10 points, thought they survived as they produce the form of champions in the second stage of the season and won an incredible 7 games in a row to drag themselves into a comfortable 13th place (out of 22).

Certain teams are notable for extremely poor seasons as a result of inability to come to terms with the gulf. These include:

Swindon Town F.C. 1993/94 - Conceded 100 league goals in their only top division season to date.

Ipswich Town F.C. 1994/95 - Won only five games that season, and beaten a record 9-0 by Manchester United F.C.. This was three seasons after they had won promotion to the then-new Premier League, and in the previous two seasons they had finished 16th and 19th.

Sunderland A.F.C. 2005/06 - Finished with just 15 points, beating the record low of 19 that they set in 2002/03 (four years after promotion). They also hit a new low of 3 wins, just one year after being promoted to the Premier League as Championship champions.

Derby County F.C. 2007/08 - Just one league win all season and finished with 11 points. The worst Premier League performance ever, and the only the second team ever to complete an English professional league campaign with one win in a season. This came one year after they had been promoted as Championship playoff winners.

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