Just look at the PL table this season...SIXTEEN points between 5th and 7th place, the gap is widening and the transfer fees and wages are widening too.
It's a microcosm of capitialism and it's difficult to see where it is going to end up, probably with the elite in a seperate league.
Or we could bounce back up like Burnley or Newcastle....
OK, you have all persuaded me. We can win the cup and go down, but somehow I need to take my older grandson to Wembley (he’ll be 21 months in May).
I don't know why people are dismissing the prospect of winning the PL. Afterall, we're talking completely hypothetically.
If you offered me FA Cup and relegation this season, over no FA Cup and survival this season followed by winning the PL next season, I'd be choosing the latter.
Do I think we're likely to win the PL anytime soon? No, of course I don't. But this is a completely hypothetical discussion, so it shouldn't be dismissed. And in any event, a surprise side has won the PL more recently than one has won the FA Cup. (I agree that it's a very rare event, but equally just go and have a look at the FA Cup winners since Wimbledon won it 30 years ago!)
That wasn’t the choice though. Start a seperate thread for that![]()

They aren't widening, though. Everton, whose revenues were actually lower than ours last season, has spent more on transfers than Liverpool, Man United, Arsenal and Spurs. Swansea has spent about as much as Inter Milan. The gap in raw dollars is larger, yes, but as a percentage it's smaller, and as of a couple years ago it wasn't just Leicester who had stolen a march on the top teams. It's actually something of an intriguing question as to why that has happened.
Aside from being bought by someone on the same scale as City or PSG.
We’d be amazing but it would be bought and not earned.
I despise City more than Liverpool. They have simply bought their way to sucess. Yes they play great, but when you can bend the rules to keep all the other teams in check to get the best players then you are going to.
I'm still claiming some credit for this I hope you realise
I think we've lost some voters too as Stay up was narrowly ahead before the other one shut.
Your thread never happened. It’s all about me.
Everton are almost an elite club, they are the 7th biggest club traditionally, their owner invested a lot of personal wealth into them. We will NEVER spend on the scale of Everton on transfers and wages.
Swansea are in a different league to Inter, the PL is a lot richer than Serie A atm.
The top six = Everton have all got the capacity to spend £50m + on players and offer massive wages, the rest of the league can't compete, espacially as their better players are hoovered up by the elite clubs.
The disparity will just grow as I can't see the economics of Football changing any time soon.
The rest of the league is competing more now than they were ten years ago. That's the point here: from a financial standpoint, there is no reason to suggest that it is worse now than it was a few years ago. Indeed, all indications are that it is better. Stating that our revenues were one-third of Man Utd (the richest in the world) in 2016-17 might sound paltry, but in 2000-01 the ratio was about 9:1.
Have you looked at the League table?...from 7th place down clubs are not competing at all.
The rest of the league is competing more now than they were ten years ago. That's the point here: from a financial standpoint, there is no reason to suggest that it is worse now than it was a few years ago. Indeed, all indications are that it is better. Stating that our revenues were one-third of Man Utd (the richest in the world) in 2016-17 might sound paltry, but in 2000-01 the ratio was about 9:1.
Have you looked at the League table?...from 7th place down clubs are not competing at all.
I absolutely have. And I have looked at the league table for 2015-16 as well, which saw Liverpool in 8th, Chelsea in 10th, Leicester as champions, and ourselves and West Ham within sniffing distance of Champions League. What changed in the interim was not the financial state of the game, but rather poor decision-making by the teams that were threatening to (or succeeding in) knocking down the door. Yeah, Leicester lost players; their bigger problem is that they have spent 70m in two years on strikers who have produced all of ten league goals in that span. Nothing about the financial state of the game made them throw massive money at backup strikers.
I'd like to see a list of squad values and wages, that would be interesting.
People will always use that crazy season as an example, but in truth it was an anomaly and the following seasons have seen the elite get their act together and use their wealth to their full advantage.
On a percentage basis wages are much closer than they've ever been. Squad value is an inexact science, obviously, but check the spread in 2005:
https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/premier-league/startseite/wettbewerb/GB1/plus/?saison_id=2005
versus today:
https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/premier-league/startseite/wettbewerb/GB1/plus/?saison_id=2017
The ratio certainly hasn't grown, and 2004-05 was the year that Bolton made the UEFA Cup and threatened for CL.