As the Premier League season crawls to an end with what some would like to believe is the grand flourish of a grim battle for fifth place and a spot in a Champions League that has very few champions in it, some among the billionaire boys’ club that make up our elite teams are already seeking excuses for their rank mediocrity.
Their go-to defence, which they dare not speak too loudly because they know how absurd it makes them look, is that their ambitions are being thwarted by the restrictions placed on them by Profit and Sustainability Rules.
But the truth is a lot simpler and a lot starker than that: the Premier League has become ordinary because so many of its top clubs are run with astonishing levels of incompetence and entitlement.
To watch Chelsea versus Manchester United on Friday night, for instance, was to stare straight into the face of the complacency, arrogance and mismanagement that helped to make this league season such an easy stroll for Liverpool, the best-run of the so-called Big Six.
The sheer scale of the ordinariness on view at Stamford Bridge was startling. It was a towering monument to mediocrity and profligacy. The people in charge at Chelsea, Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali, told us they would educate us with a re-imagining of how football works but instead of serving up caviar, they are giving us tripe.
PSR is not the problem for clubs like Chelsea. The problem for Chelsea and United, in particular, is epic levels of waste masterminded by club hierarchies which, in both instances, appear hugely overblown with executives and tragically pleased with the mediocrity they have created.
PSR is not the problem for clubs like Chelsea and Manchester United. The problem is epic levels of waste masterminded by club hierarchies
To watch Chelsea v Manchester United was to stare straight into the face of the complacency, arrogance and mismanagement that helped to make this season such a stroll for Liverpool
Both clubs are hugely overblown with executives and tragically pleased with their mediocrity
There were only three or four players of elite quality on that pitch on Friday night: Bruno Fernandes for United and Cole Palmer and Moises Caicedo for Chelsea. Reece James provided a rare moment to applaud with the brilliant turn and cross that set up the winner for Marc Cucurella.
Chelsea’s wild celebrations at the final whistle felt faintly comic. I realise that qualifying for next season’s Champions League is important but they are fighting for fifth place. Their directors of football – two of them – have spent £1.2bn and they have spent it on so much dross that they may yet fall out of the top five on the final day of the season.
PSR was supposed to bake in the superiority of clubs like United and Chelsea. That has emerged as one of the great myths of recent Premier League history.
It is not necessarily that the fears of PSR’s critics are unfounded. It is more that if PSR does give the biggest clubs an advantage, clubs like United and Chelsea seem intent on blowing it.
If there was any consolation for Chelsea fans on Friday night, it was that United are even more badly run than them. Chelsea might be ordinary but United can only dream of being ordinary. How have they got to a point where only Fernandes from their best XI would get into the starting line-up of a top six club? No one else would be close.
So let’s have a little less bleating about PSR. The reality is that many Premier League clubs are squandering the vast amount of wealth at their disposal from the accumulated riches of their television deal with one horrendous recruitment decision after another.
At United, they get it wrong time after time after time after time with amateur-night decisions that cost tens of millions of pounds and then Sir Jim Ratcliffe puts ticket prices up, sacks a few staff in the canteen and cancels free lunches.
It is time for our elite teams to stop passing the buck and start taking responsibility. The Premier League is losing its lustre and it is no one’s fault but their own.
There were only three or four players of elite quality on that pitch on Friday night: Bruno Fernandes (left) for United and Cole Palmer (right) and Moises Caicedo for Chelsea
It is time for our elite teams to stop passing the buck and start taking responsibility
At United, they get it wrong time after time after time and then Sir Jim Ratcliffe puts ticket prices up, sacks a few staff in the canteen and cancels free lunches
Why Lineker had to go
It is the right decision for Gary Lineker and the BBC to go their separate ways now, not later. It has felt, for some time, like a relationship that has run its course but it was wonderful while it lasted.
Lineker was a brilliant footballer, one of the greatest strikers England has ever had, and it is to his everlasting credit that he has become such an accomplished and intelligent broadcaster, too.
Few felt he would be able to fill the gap left by Des Lynam at Match of the Day but he did it with aplomb. He was relaxed and clever and knowledgeable. And he was funny, too. When Match of the Day came on and he was presenting it, you knew it was going to be good.
His opinions and his promptings and the cultured ease of his skill in front of the camera ensured that. I hate it when people tell anyone involved in sport to ‘stay in their lane’ and I admired Lineker for the monologue he delivered at the start of the BBC’s coverage of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Most other presenters ducked the controversy over Qatar’s hosting of the tournament and its treatment of migrant workers. He did not.
It is the right decision for Gary Lineker and the BBC to go their separate ways now, not later
Few felt he would fill the gap left by Des Lynam at Match of the Day but he did it with aplomb
He has made a series of mistakes recently, the most grievous of which was the inadvertent reposting of an anti-Semitic message on social media, that made his position at the BBC untenable.
If you use your platform, as Lineker did in 2023, to take on the Home Secretary of the day, Suella Braverman, over the UK’s asylum policy and accuse it of using language redolent of Nazi Germany, it makes it harder to plead ignorance when you inadvertently re-post anti-Semitic propaganda that features imagery…redolent of Nazi Germany. After that, it was time to go.
Lineker deserves to be remembered not for that but for all the enjoyment he brought millions of viewers every week. He became the Lynam of his era and there can be no higher praise than that. I’ll miss him when he’s gone.
Rahm slips away into irrelevance again
The best sport I saw this weekend was Crystal Palace beating Manchester City to win the FA Cup final and lift the first major trophy in their 120-year history.
But when I got home on Saturday evening, I turned on the television and watched Scottie Scheffler play five of the most immaculate holes of golf I have ever seen.
His display at the end of his third round at Quail Hollow laid the foundations for his victory at the US PGA tournament, his third major triumph.
Sunday was another reminder of how Jon Rahm’s move to the LIV tour derailed his career
There was a brief passage of play on Sunday when Jon Rahm contended but Rahm imploded in the last three holes. It was another reminder of how Rahm’s move to the LIV tour derailed a career that seemed to be heading for the stars.
He made a stack of money and blew his place in history. This is the McIlroy-Scheffler Show now.
RIP, Brian
The first time I met Brian Glanville, the celebrated and much-respected football journalist who died last week at the age of 93, was when I sat next to him in the press box at Stamford Bridge 30 years ago.
‘Lecce have just taken the lead at Milan,’ he proclaimed to anyone who would listen in the stentorian voice that often broadcast his love of the Italian game at a time when most of us didn’t know our Lecce from our latte.
I admired Brian Glanville for his unending love for the game and for the way he talked to managers in post-match press conferences as if they were his equal
Glanville (picture, right of Elton John) had a wit so acid it could burn through a laptop
I admired Glanville for his unending love for the game and for the way he talked to managers in post-match press conferences as if they were his equal rather than with the deference that has always seeped into my interactions with them.
He also had a wit so acid it could burn through a laptop. One line, in particular, has stayed with me.
Some of my friends and I were larking around a bit on a coach full of journalists on the way to an England game and our youthful preening became a little too much for Brian.
He shot one of my mates a withering look before delivering his judgment. ‘I do wish I had that man’s overconfidence,’ he said.
