Is The Championship Heading For Meltdown?

There is a big gap in the Championship in terms of the money teams have to spend, and while the league is probably at its most level this season, could we be heading for a gap the same as they have in the Premiership. Burnley have already spoke out against the parachute payments saying that they give the teams an unfair advantage over the lower clubs in the division. The Lancashire team may have a point in their objection to the parachute payments, teams who earn promotion may budget to be in the top flight for the one season , collect their drop out payments and then be able to strengthen their team to mount a real challenge on the Premiership.

There are a number of teams that could be the ’break away’ clubs who will dominate the Championship in the future. I have identified six teams from the current clubs in the league that I believe will dominate. Those teams are Watford, Charlton, West Brom, Sheffield United, Southampton and Wolves. These six clubs have been in the Premiership in recent years and have always been well backed financially, players are tempted to go to these clubs as they can offer the demands that the players are asking.

Managers know they will have some money to spend, so the top clubs will become almost like Chelsea, being able to offer the high demands and go out and buy their top targets. There are also three clubs in the Premiership, who if my predictions are right ( and judging by my performance for in the prediction league on the Championship pod cast) they will be the three clubs relegated into the league next season and they can join the dominate group, Derby, Reading and Sunderland.

This means that their will be nine teams that are competing for the promotion places, but if its always these teams that earn promotion, then there will only be six teams in the race for promotion. So the open league we have now, could soon become a boring league that is easy to predict. So what would the solution be to this potential problem.
The parachute payments are a must if the relegated teams are to survive.

The Premiership is such a gold mine, but also requires a large amount of money to be spent, and assuming that players have longer than one year, clubs would struggle to be able to pay their players as the gravy boat gets substantially smaller once you drop into the Championship. It just would not be practical to offer just one year contracts, especially at a time when loyalty is already a thing of the past.

The rugby union idea of player wage capping could be a potential solution as no club would be able to spend more on wages than other clubs, therefore there would be even competition for players signatures.

The problem however of wage capping is that you would have to also get the Premiership to operate the same method, in order to make sure that it would be fair on all teams, but the Premiership club would never agree to this as part of the reason the league was set up in the first place was for the top clubs to get a bigger share of the money, the ‘little’ clubs, as they are to the elite, mean nothing to the clubs in the premiership.

The solution is hard to find, and maybe the unevenness in the Championship will be unavoidable and it will just be something we all have to get used to and the other clubs will need to find a new goal to reach, maybe this will rejuvenate the FA Cup.