Why The Premier League Is In Its Worst State Since Its Inception

Alexis Sanchez, Angel Di Maria, Mesut Ozil. All were supposedly blockbuster signings yet all of them were castaway by their previous clubs. In fact, if you were naming premier league players who might possibly get in the teams of Bayern Munich, Real Madrid or Barcelona you’re looking at David De Gea, Thibaut Courtois, Sergio Aguero and Eden Hazard. The Premier League doesn’t attract the top quality players anymore, only Aguero of these was at his peak when he joined the league, the others have had to develop in the premier league. Gone are the days that Premier League Clubs can attract the best in Europe. Yet this is only part of the Premier League’s problem.

The over spending of almost every team on frankly average players is evident. You only have to look at Man City spending £220 million in the last 3 seasons without buying a single top class player. Then you look at Liverpool throwing £20million at mediocre players last summer, Tottenham doing the same the summer before and you realise why these teams are struggling to improve. They’ve both had the resources to do so, more so than many of their foreign counterparts. Even further down the league, Southampton widely praised for their summer dealings given the end result, yet £12million for Shane Long would now be seen as a standard price in the league. If Long played abroad and was bought by a foreign side, I’d imagine he wouldn’t cost close to this figure and if he did he would be considered a flop, not an average signing. When Newcastle splashed £6million on Emmanuel Riviere, French journalists couldn’t believe what had happened, believing the player was worth closer to £3million. The fact is, premier league clubs are grossly overspending. This is shown by Sunderland having a strike force of £32 million worth of strikers, yet being embarrassingly poor in front of goal.

The Premier League’s lower clubs are not the standard they used to be. It used to be an argument that whilst other leagues had stronger top clubs, the Premier League had stronger teams further down the division. Whilst this is impossible to test completely, the standard has declined considerably. Previously, I would look at the bottom of the league and often think that at least 1 of the teams that would go down did not deserve to, now I think most of the bottom half of the table deserve relegation. The fact that a team like Newcastle can get to halfway through the season and be effectively safe reflects the low standard of the division.