Much as I would like to use this story to rejoice in my football team Crystal Palace’s amazing win against Aston Villa in last Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final, there’s little about the result that is relevant to the negotiation. Or perhaps there is, but I just can’t get my head around it, having had my head in the clouds for the last 5 days. As the major European league seasons draw to a close, most of the major leagues’ winners have been identified many weeks ago, with Liverpool, Bayern Munich, Paris St Germain and Ajax all either having won or about to win their respective leagues. The only tight race is in Italy, where Inter have been chased down by Napoli and it looks like that one is going to the wire. Any Manchester Utd fan lamenting their very difficult league season should be wondering how they let Scott McTominay leave, who has been a revelation for Napoli, having scored 19 goals in 178 appearances for Utd yet already racking up 11 in 30 games for his new club, being hailed in Italy as a revelation.
This weekend marks the end of the Championship season, the 2nd tier in English Football. The two promoted teams, Leeds Utd & Burnley, will both reach 100 points if they win their final matches. Whilst the clubs in 3rd & 4th are guaranteed a slot in the play-offs, there are realistically 5 teams who can make the other 2 places. For any club in the Championship, getting into the Premier League (PL) is the holy grail, not as a result of the huge sums of money available, but the parachute payments paid by the PL for a number of years after any relegation. This season has seen the 3 clubs who were promoted to the PL in 2023/24 season being relegated, their fate clear for some time.
When people think about Negotiation in football, thought typically centres around players and transfer fees. However, the boards of all 3 promoted clubs will need to be thinking carefully about their strategies for player recruitment, retention and reduction, and how much money they are prepared to invest. Recent years have shown that the quality gap between the promoted clubs and the established PL clubs has grown significantly, thus making it harder for teams to be competitive. Fulham spent more than £100m when they were promoted in 2020 and were relegated the following season. So do the promoted clubs Twist and ‘break the bank’ to stay up, or do they adopt a more cautious strategy and Stick adopting the adage from Steve Miller Band in his 1976 hit and ‘Take the Money and Run’. Another factor for promoted clubs to consider are the ‘Profit and Sustainability Rules’ (PSR), where clubs have to submit their accounts to the PL each season and face point deductions if they lose more than £105m in any 3 consecutive seasons. The PL was forced to change this to include relegated clubs, as Leicester City were able to escape this when they were promoted last season – they are one of the clubs that have been relegated.
My sense is that Leeds will be bold and spend significantly (there is also talk of them changing the manager, and they see themselves as a big city club) and that Burnley will be a little more cautious, particularly as their current manager was at the helm for Fulham during the aforementioned relegation, having been beaten in their last game by Burnley! There will be many people who watched the documentary ‘Sunderland ‘Til I Die’, who will want them to get a taste of PL football (they are in the play-offs) and let’s not forget that the club promoted in the play-off has less time to plan their campaign, as the final is on May 24 and is still argued to be the richest game in world football.
I don’t bet, but there is decent money to be made by betting all the promoted clubs will be relegated next season…
