More than anything, it’s the utter sense of resignation that strikes you. There is anger, too.
After a summer that has seen our big Premier League clubs spend and exchange players with all the dignity of the Wolf of Wall Street trading floor, the mood among many of our rank and file top-flight clubs is unanimous.
‘It feels like it’s over for us,’ says one Premier League executive. ‘They say this is the most competitive league in the world. Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not allowed to be. The rules make sure of that.’
The spend in the Premier League this summer was a record £3.49billion. Half of that was spent in deals between top-flight clubs. It’s a story of a league that is now so extraordinarily wealthy that – outside of Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and Barcelona – the only clubs rich enough to buy its players are its own.
What that says about the competitiveness of the big European competitions going forward is one thing – English clubs dominated last year – but it’s the increasingly skewed landscape of the Premier League that is now concerning many.
Across English football this week – from executives to coaches to scouts and recruitment specialists – the mood has reflected an environment that has perhaps changed for ever.
Recruitment from the pyramid of the English game, for example, is now desperately low. Of those players taken from the Championship by Premier League clubs this window, the vast majority were from the three clubs relegated last season.
‘Clubs no longer have the patience to see investments in EFL players pay off over time,’ explains one recruiter at a big club. ‘They want results immediately and they want impact and star names. There is an arrogance from our big clubs and it’s damaging.
‘Signing players is about taking a chance but modern clubs would rather spend £130m on a big name or take someone from clubs lower down in the Premier League who have already done the hard work for them.’
That in itself is an emerging trend. Clubs like Brentford, Bournemouth and Brighton have established recruitment models that are the envy of the so-called 'Big Six'. They sign unknown players for small sums before selling them to top-end rivals for vast numbers. Jan Paul van Hecke from Brighton to Spurs is a good recent example.
It’s a practice that on the surface works at both ends. Big clubs get oven-ready players and the smaller clubs make handsome transfer profits. But it’s also a trend that serves to keep the status quo in place on the field. It’s here that the frustration turns to anger.
‘There are well-run clubs doing things the right way who have owners with money yet they are not allowed to spend it,’ adds another Premier League executive. ‘Brentford and Brighton got more points than Chelsea last season. But they are not allowed to spend as much even if they have it.
‘You should never confuse sustainability with competitiveness. We are not competitive. We are not allowed to be by the rules that are essentially endorsed by the big clubs.’
Current spending rules are complicated but broadly speaking allow clubs to spend 85 per cent of what they earn on players, wages and football staff. If you play in Europe, it’s 70 per cent under UEFA’s regulations. It’s this that causes the resentment.
‘Brighton have got very close,’ says a source who has worked at three top-flight clubs. ‘But they are stuck in a cycle of relative success which is not really success at all in terms of winning things. They are a great club. Well run with a fabulous stadium and training ground.
‘But there is no point anybody buying them because no matter how much money is pumped into it, they wouldn’t be able to spend it on the pitch. Clubs like them and Bournemouth have such limited capacity for growth.’
Another source puts it rather more bluntly. ‘The rules were once worthy and designed to stop people behaving like idiots,’ he says. ‘Sadly the rules have now become a device to stop there ever being a level playing field. The big clubs earn big and spend big. The others don’t and can’t. It’s fundamentally rigged.’
Last November’s vote on new spending rules by top-flight clubs was carried by 14-6, the very minimum required. The dissenters were, not surprisingly, Brighton, Brentford, Bournemouth, Crystal Palace, Fulham and Leeds.
At the same time, a proposal to introduce a system of 'anchoring' – where spending by any club could not exceed five times the money earned in the previous season by the league's bottom club from prize money, TV fees and collective commercial income – was supported by only seven clubs and therefore thrown out. The dissenters viewed it as in effect a wage cap.
'The votes are hard,’ reveals someone from inside the room. ‘You have the top six clubs who vote the way it suits them and then the ones who think they may have a chance of becoming one.
‘Everton are a great example of that. The new stadium they think will lead to new revenues and new commercials. And then the new clubs who have been promoted will understandably vote that way too.
‘They just want their £100m for coming up and don’t wanna p*** off Man United as they may need to loan a player from them. It’s a mess and all of this is accelerated and compounded by the media.
‘They say, “They haven’t spent” or “They have had a bad window”. We will spend right up the limit but the truth is that our limits are different and that isn’t fair is it?’
In an interview with the True Faith Newcastle United Podcast this week, the Magpies’ chief executive David Hopkinson attempted to outline the way forward for a club awash with Saudi Arabian riches that it cannot spend.
Having lost Anthony Gordon, Bruno Guimaraes and Sandro Tonali this summer, Newcastle are perhaps the best example of a club that feels it’s being held back on a short lead by the league in which it plays.
Hopkinson talked of growing revenues by 50 per cent between now and 2030. He talked of new commercial revenue streams and sponsorship deals but that figure feels wildly optimistic. ‘We are going to catch up from behind,’ he said bullishly. ‘We have a plan.’
Inevitably that plan must include a new stadium at some stage. This is what has launched Tottenham into the stratosphere when it comes to income and this is what Everton are hanging a blue hat on too. ‘We need more stadium capacity because that capacity is revenue,’ Hopkinson said.
Buried within all this, however, was something else that impacts directly on supporters and not in a good way. It’s another direct trickle down of the League’s restrictions on spending.
Hopkinson talked of ‘VIP hosting opportunities’ and a demand for a ‘higher priced product’. Often what this means is a move to ease out regular fans in a bid to squeeze in those wiling to pay through the nose for what they view as a premium corporate match-day experience.
It is symptomatic of a need to push at the edges of what clubs feel they can get away with in a bid to eke a few more quid from their paying customers.
‘We have had to put regular ticket prices up so that means our fans suffer,’ says a third Premier League chief. ‘We have to do anything we can to try and create a little more revenue that we can then invest in the squad. But it’s still nowhere near what the big clubs can do.
‘And this pressure to compete can promote clubs gambling with that they have and pushing at the margins. It leads clubs into trouble.’
Maybe the best example of this is Aston Villa, a club whose manager Unai Emery spoke eloquently about the limitations of the rules last season.
‘Financial control rules came to football to avoid bankruptcies and payment defaults with a good purpose,’ said Emery. ‘But this good tool will become a limitation.’
Villa have been successful under Emery. They won the Europa League last season and are about to play Champions League football for a second time in recent years. But their wage bill has rocketed in that time – breaching 90 per cent wages to turnover ratio at one point – while they, along with Chelsea, Nottingham Forest and Newcastle, have all been found to be in breach of UEFA’s spending rules last July.
It’s this that contributes to the kind of boom-bust experience of some of our more ambitious clubs. Successful one season, less so the next. Villa have, for example, lost more than half of their Europa League winning team in the recent window.
Villa – in the process of increasing the capacity of Villa Park from 43,000 to more than 50,000 – voted in favour of the new rules last November and amid all the rancour a question that often goes unanswered is what spending rules in England’s top division actually should look like.
One suggestion from a southern club was for all squads to have the same wage bill ceiling. The 'anchoring' system would have been a step towards that but that idea never got very far.
Meanwhile, another of our insiders adds: ‘I don’t think subsidies are the answer. I agree with the big clubs on that. Why should Tesco give its profits to the corner shop?
'But I do think owners should be allowed to inject money as equity that can then be spent on the football. It’s not debt. Debt comes with interest and must be repaid. It’s damaging. Equity is not the same at all. It should be allowed.’
Finally, a third small suggestion from a club in the midlands.
‘We suggested the wages of a home-grown player be added on the balance sheet as a positive,’ a staffer explains. ‘In other words, not included on your expenditure. That wage could then be spent on another player. It would act as a reward for growing your own. It never got past first base.’
When the Premier League announced their amended spending rules last season, they talked of ‘competitive balance’ and ‘promoting opportunities’. Looking across the landscape today, it’s hard to see evidence of it.
With the league having virtually annexed the fifth Champions League spot for the foreseeable future, seasonal revenues of at least £100m from that competition serves to widen the gap further.
Underpinning it all, meanwhile, is a nagging feeling among many with Premier League experience that the bubble has to burst at some point. The current TV deal is worth £6.7bn and runs until 2028 but with the way football fans consume their favourite sport ever changing, there is likely to be a shifting in the sands at some point.
Those numbers cannot be relied upon for ever and already this season the Premier League are experimenting in Singapore with producing and selling their own content direct to viewers.
Speaking on the Athletic FC podcast this week, Tim Bridge of the Deloitte Sports Business Group said: ‘I feel as though the League is banking on the ability to have the next new revenue kick – either a new broadcast contract or new commercial partner.
‘If that happens, then it’s rosy. But there is an awful lot being predicated on that (positive) future change and that feels new for the Premier League. I would suggest an appropriate approach for the 20 clubs would be to work more closely together to think about what the League is going to look like in 2035.’
Given that we are only five years on from the failed attempts by England’s big clubs to join a European Super League, the prospects of such a collegiate approach being taken feels unlikely.
And so the Premier League rolls on. So the gap between the top and the middle grows wider.
This weekend, Nottingham Forest will have hopes of beating Tottenham and Everton may have a real go at Manchester United. In the long-term, however, it is hard to see much interference in the general order of things, not when the richest six clubs earn more than the rest of the other 14 put together.
‘At past Premier League meetings we have scoffed at the way some Championship clubs work,’ one of our Premier League sources adds. ‘They have been reckless, blowing their own brains out.
‘Are we now on the way to doing the same?’