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Spontaneity and excitement are being eroded in increasingly Big Six-dominated Premier League 

Ilkay Gundogan of Manchester City wins a header challenged by Mohamed Diame of Newcastle United during the Premier League match between Newcastle United and Manchester City at St. James' Park on December 27, 2017 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England
Newcastle vs Man City was one of many depressingly one-sided Premier League matches this season Credit: Getty Images

When Leicester City won the Premier League two years ago it felt like a watershed moment. In a division where the gulf between the haves and have-nots had never been greater, the 5,000/1 outsiders Leicester had pulled off arguably the greatest ever upset in English football history.

As a nation rejoiced, the Premier League’s big boys reacted as if to say: "never again".

The two Manchester clubs and Chelsea each brought in one of the world’s best managers (on a combined salary of £21.5m), while they all, plus Liverpool, Arsenal and to a lesser extent the already upwardly mobile Tottenham set about spending huge sums on rebuilding their squad. Leicester also made some expensive signings after winning the Premier League, but their success had focused the minds of the biggest clubs, who wanted to get back on their perch.

It was as if Leicester had pulled off a major heist, and the so-called ‘Big Six’ now had to tighten its security. The result over the last 18 months has been a more authoritarian, dominant cartel than ever before.

And the effect has been numbing. For a division that trades off its frequency of upsets and the idea that ‘anyone can beat anyone’, the Premier League has been depressingly top heavy for the last season and a half.

Leicester City's Italian manager Claudio Ranieri (C) stands with the Premier league trophy as the Leicester City team take part in an open-top bus parade through Leicester to celebrate winning the Premier League title on May 16, 2016
Leicester City winning the Premier League in 2016 led to a backlash from the 'Big Six' Credit: AFP

The figures are stark. In 2014-15, the season before Leicester’s unexpected triumph, Big Six sides picked up 2.13 points per game in matches against non Big Six teams and had a winning percentage of 64.9 from those games.

These numbers plummeted in Leicester’s title winning campaign of 2015-16 to 1.82 points per game and a win percentage of 52.4. Over the last two seasons however the figures have rebounded with a vengeance. Last season, Big Six sides picked up 2.36 points per game against the non Big Six group, with a winning percentage of 72.6. Those figures are at 2.38 and 72.4 so far this campaign.

The matches have been so one-sided that the average goal difference of a Big Six v non Big Six game this season has been 1.67 in favour of the former. For the three season between 2013 and 2016 that figure was way down at an average of 0.98. 

In practical terms, it has made for a boring, predictable league where the less fancied teams often play as if their main aim is to avoid a hiding. Newcastle's depressingly ultra-defensive tactics against Manchester City where they began the match by deliberately by hoofing the ball out of play was an entirely predictable nadir. 

"It is becoming an embarrassment – the Premier League, it’s a joke," a dismayed Jamie Carragher said on Sky Sports after the tedium at St James' Park was mercifully brought to a close. 

Arsene Wenger meanwhile last month lamented how defensive non Big Six clubs have become. “First of all the crowds accepts it,” he said. “They start with the idea that if it’s a 0-0 it’s a good result. Every tackle they make the crowd goes ‘wahhhh’. You would say as long as you don’t score the first goal you’re in a position where you have to take a gamble. It is a modern problem.”

But really can anyone blame those sides when the odds are so far stacked against them? 

The Premier League has of course been dispiritingly oligopolistic before. Between the 2003-04 and 2008-09 seasons, only once did any of Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester fail to finish in the top four (and in that anomalous season Liverpool qualified for the Champions League in any case by winning the competition). But at least then there were clubs like Everton, Aston Villa and Tottenham who went close to breaking up the group and could regularly bloody the noses of the 'Big Four'. 

Fast forward to the present day and 7th-placed Burnley, who are enjoying a wonderful season, still find themselves five points behind struggling Arsenal and far closer in points terms to bottom club Swansea than leaders Manchester City. Over the festive period, the Big Six sides drew a few games, but matches like Everton 0 Manchester United 2 and Swansea 0 Tottenham 2 were depressingly samey and routine. Stoke City meanwhile - understandably given their crazy schedule - played  a reserve team in their 5-0 shellacking at Chelsea to keep players fresh for a theoretically winnable game against Newcastle. 

What's worrying is that the gulf only looks like widening - especially if the Big Six eventually get their way and convince the other teams in the league to accept a merit-based payment system that would see overseas money distributed according to where clubs finish in the table. 

Hype has always sustained the Premier League, but never has it felt further from it's self-proclaimed status as the best in the world. 

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