Juande Ramos, the Tottenham Hotspur head coach, may not have spent enough time
on his English homework, but he is well acquainted with his history. The
observation that his job is on the line after Sunday's 2-0 defeat by
Portsmouth at Fratton Park showed a strong knowledge of how calmly the
Tottenham directors traditionally react to the spectre of relegation.
Martin Jol, his predecessor, was a dead man walking from August last year,
when Tottenham representatives were photographed in Seville, the home of
Ramos's former club. Relegation was not the issue at that time, more the
failure to encroach on Champions League qualification - difficult when
Tottenham continue to solve the problems of the biggest clubs by selling
them their best players, such as Michael Carrick, Dimitar Berbatov and
Robbie Keane - but as Jol's humiliation became apparent, so the form of his
team disintegrated and the club went into freefall.
Jol's isolated state is well documented and while he limped along for a
further two months, his team had dropped to eighteenth in the table when he
made way for Ramos and any hope of recovery without a change in management
had been fatally undermined.
It was little different in 2004, when Tottenham directors feared relegation
under the caretaker stewardship of David Pleat. Although the club stood only
an outside chance of going down, at least one experienced manager was
approached to see if he would be interested in a short-term appointment,
aimed only at ensuring survival. It was a lucrative offer but was sensibly
rejected and, in the end, Pleat's team were 12 points clear of the
relegation zone.
No matter what the investment in Ramos's vision - a path that is becoming
harder to comprehend, particularly after the comment from Gustavo Poyet, the
Spaniard's assistant, that Roman Pavlyuchenko, the new striker, and Darren
Bent are so similar as to be incompatible - experience suggests that if
Tottenham even half-suspect that they may go down, they will ditch Ramos
without compunction.
Fear is the key here, just as it is in so many corners of the Barclays Premier
League. On the face of it, this is the best and brightest domestic football
competition in the world, a convention of all the talents, one that has
taken as dry a product as Wigan Athletic versus Manchester City and made it
not only acceptable to the watching neutral, but also positively
scintillating.
It is one hell of an achievement, yet it is built on the jangling nerve
endings of frightened men. Fear pervades the top, the bottom and all points
in between. Fear of failure, fear of disappointing, fear of falling out,
fear of not getting back; fear of being unable to meet the huge financial
demands of maintaining a place in the Premier League or Champions League
next season.
Across North London it is not relegation that concerns but graduation, with
the new rules passed by Michel Platini, the Uefa president, coming into
effect at the end of this campaign. From then, the top three Premier League
clubs will qualify automatically for the Champions League, as opposed to the
top two, but the fourth-placed team will be required to play off against
considerably stronger opposition than in previous seasons, being matched
against an equivalent qualifier from a country such as Italy or Spain.
In other words, no more cosy trips to rattle up two away goals against
Lokomotiv Bobbins, of Bulgaria. Next year, the elite team finishing fourth
may have to outwit José Mourinho, not Steve McClaren. As it stands, the
fourth-placed team in Serie A are Inter Milan; in Spain it is Seville. Now
it gets interesting.
In the years since three or four English teams have been allowed entry, only
two have failed to make it through the qualifying stage and one of those,
Everton in 2005-06, were drawn against Villarreal. Newcastle United's
elimination by Partizan Belgrade in 2003-04 is the only giant-killing of an
English club and, with hindsight, it was not so much of a surprise, being
the first glimpse of what we now recognise was the end of Newcastle's spell
as a top-flight force.
So the competition has cranked up a gear. It is no longer the need to finish
fourth or higher that obsesses the elite, but third, minimum. From this
season, fourth place will guarantee only a £20 million two-leg cup final in
August against a team who may be every bit as wealthy, capable or astutely
managed.
Does this matter? After all, AC Milan are without Champions League football
this season, as Bayern Munich were last season (and will be again unless
Jürgen Klinsmann gets his finger out). Yet the investment in maintaining an
elite position in the Premier League is vast. Could Liverpool's finances
under the present owners withstand a year in the revamped Uefa Cup? Would
Arsenal's boasts of having £30 million in the transfer kitty that Arsène
Wenger chooses not to spend dry in the throat?
Wenger appeared greatly disturbed by Saturday's 2-1 home defeat by Hull City;
indeed, he has cut an increasingly agitated figure on the touchline in
recent years, suggesting that he feels the pressure of keeping Arsenal in
touch with rivals who have considerably deeper pockets.
Might it be that with a Liverpool revival at last under way, Manchester United
certain to improve now that Cristiano Ronaldo is fit and Chelsea looking
strong under Luiz Felipe Scolari, the Arsenal manager can see that his
players face their toughest challenge yet, with potentially far-reaching
consequences if next summer brings a visit to the San Siro rather than a
gentle introduction to European competition against Twente, a team Arsenal
beat 2-0 away with a central midfield of Denilson and Aaron Ramsey?
As well as a springboard for global domination, the Premier League used to be
a safe haven for a small, well-run club, but with the arrival of wealthy
foreign interests, their existence has grown precarious. These clubs, such
as Middlesbrough or Bolton Wanderers, could never win the competition and
most years would do well to finish in the top half, but there were the
occasional moments of glory - Uefa Cup qualification or a domestic cup run -
and security, provided that the manager kept the ship steady. Times have
changed.
If there are 20 clubs and more than half are controlled by fabulous foreign
wealth, the chances of relegation for those not backed by large investment
grows. Even at this formative stage there would appear to be a
disproportionately large number of English-owned clubs in the bottom half of
the table and a rump of foreign-owned clubs gathered in the top half.
It is this that has driven one chairman of a Premier League club to call at a
recent meeting - misguidedly, it must be said - for protected status for
businesses such as Wigan, Bolton and Middlesbrough, clubs he identified as
being run for the community, rather than to publicise oil-rich Gulf states
as holiday destinations or as part of global investment portfolios.
It had previously been presumed that foreign investors would be intent on
messing with the traditions of English football, when in fact it is the
natives who have blinked first. What has been floated - without success,
thankfully - would mean the beginning of the end for relegation. The plan
will not get off the ground, but it shows the growing feeling of desperation
among those who feel unable to compete in a league in which investment is
measured in hundreds of millions.
It would be easy to be unsympathetic to this band of English chairmen. After
all, each man in a position of power has, in his professional life, reaped
the rewards of the free market. It seems disingenuous to ask for controls in
football that would not be welcomed in other forms of business. How would
protected status work, for a start? Relegation only applicable to
foreign-owned clubs? You can be lousy as long as you are English? No chance.
Indeed, watching Wigan beat Manchester City on Sunday, it was possible to
interpret increased foreign ownership as a galvanising force, one that has
motivated smaller clubs. This season, unlovely, unfancied Wigan have been
inspired to take their football to a higher level. They are a genuinely good
team under Steve Bruce and that development might not have happened were
improvement not so essential.
Yet it is also possible to feel sympathy for men such as Steve Gibson at
Middlesbrough, or Bill Kenwright at Everton, who do appear to have the
old-fashioned concept of the football club as heart and soul of the
community as motivation, but are increasingly drawn into a game of high-risk
poker against players with stake money to burn. If the Premier League is
populated by 20 billionaire owners, three still have to go down.
The fear factor at the lower end, however, concerns a Premier League populated
by 15 billionaire owners, with relegation a permanent issue for the
remaining five, who can never plan for the long term, face a constant battle
for survival and stagger between divisions, buying players in a frantic tilt
at self-preservation one year, jettisoning them the next to cut costs. In
these circumstances, the only hope becomes the anomaly season, when a big
club who should be sitting pretty mess up and are dragged into a relegation
battle for which they are mentally unprepared.
And this brings us back to Tottenham. Ramos may not be able to explain in
perfect English what it is that ails his and many other clubs, but he does
not need to. Some emotions translate across every language in the Premier
League's tower of anxious babble.
