Is The Championship Threatening To Outshine The Premier League For Entertainment?

There has, and always will be a noticeable gap in talent and skill from the Premier League and the Championship, but in terms of entertainment and excitability the two leagues are not far off each other in my opinion.

The significant gap between the top sides in the premier league and the rest is widening due to billionaire owners like Man City’s Sheikh Mansour and Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich. With the money that is being invested into teams like City and Chelsea, the sides that are less fortunate to have such wealthy owners will and are struggling to keep up with the leagues high flyers financially and on the pitch.

This summer alone £485 million pounds was spent by premier league clubs on improving their squad.  The league’s top three sides provided£ 157 million pounds of the amount which definitely shows money does talk when it comes to the English game. According to Deloitte, 66% of this summer’s transfer fees came from 5 of the premiership’s top clubs ( Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester City, Arsenal) with all the sides exceeding the £50 million pound mark.

This obvious gap in wealth between some of the teams in the premier league can only mean the league will become more one sided, and more predictable. Yes football is a funny game and anything can happen when two sets of players go on to a pitch, but the reality is, rich clubs are inevitably going to blow the smaller sides out of the water 9 times out of 10. Would a salary cap make the league more competitive and harder to predict? I’ll let you decide.

The predictability of teams like both Manchester sides doing well is already there to been seen this season, with both teams on near perfect points.  We all know, or have a good idea of who is going to be in the top four this season. I mean, I would put my mortgage on Man Utd and Man City not making the top four spots come next April.

On the other hand, in my opinion, England second best league is as, if not more exciting to watch then the premiership in general. The competitiveness of the Championship clear, with  two of the teams who have just been promoted from League One sit in the top six positions. I’m not saying all the teams in the Championship are of the same level, yes, teams like West Ham, Cardiff, Leicester are likely to be in or around the promotion places this term. But, you would have to say there are at least a dozen teams who will all fancy their chances of getting promoted to the top flight this year.

Of course the Championship will always be second fiddle to the Premiership, but in terms of all season edge of your seat football, the Championship is more entertaining. 

Jamie Hopkins @hoppo112