It’s strange that this parachute payments thing has now become widely accepted as the biggest injustice in football. You rarely hear complaints that winning the Premier League and Champions League attracts a big cash prize that sets you up to remain at the top, why is it so different in this league? It’s a really lazy take, particularly from the fans of the jealous wannabe clubs likeCoventry and Wednesday. They would sell their own mothers to be in receipt of these payments!
In fairness for years people have talked about how the CL money had created a Big 4, then a Big 6.
The recent exploits of Villa, and likely Forest, and the collapse of Man U, have to an extent masked that imbalance.
Now, instead of a Big 6, you have effectively a Huge 7/8 and then Big 9/10. An almost closed shop of 17 teams, one of Erin's would have to have an absolute travesty of a season to end up going down.
Hence, the talk of imbalance has shifted to the top of the Championship (because taking about the importance at the bottom of the PL brings too many questions) as for a long time a team with a decent set up, but not necessarily cash rich, could make the dream and go up (see us, Ipswich).
The rest of the Championship are now looking at Soton, Leicester and Ipswich and quite rightly wondering how any of them will challenge them next year.
The noise will only get worse. I don't see a way out of this without PL2 rearing it's head again (2 divisions of 18) - which might help in the short term but will only shift the problem down 16 places or so. (Because the real answer, a note even distribution of the PLTV money across the whole league is never going to happen)
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