Arsène Wenger has just drawn attention, as Manchester City prepare to pay Wolfsburg £27m for Edin Dzeko, to the number of £20m players who do not even get on the bench at Eastlands, not to mention a player such as Craig Bellamy whom City are effectively paying to play for someone else.
The Arsenal manager has a point. City's spending in the last couple of seasons has been beyond reckless, yet because their owners can easily afford the sums it does not destabilise the club but distorts the market for everyone else. That said, one imagines Carlo Ancelotti wishes he had a few more £20m options on the bench. Chelsea have spent big in the past but appear to have trimmed their squad a little too tightly this season. They still have plenty of quality and the loss might be more imagined than real, though it is beginning to look as though a significant part of the Chelsea success story lay in having genuine competition for all places at all times.
Manchester City at least have that. Whether they can become the sort of relentless machine Chelsea resembled under José Mourinho and then reprised more briefly for Guus Hiddink and Ancelotti remains to be seen, but the lesson from London appears to be that saving money and running the side on more sensible lines is at least as difficult as building a title-winning team through extravagant spending.
When Wenger came to England 14 years ago, he claims this sort of blackjack table mentality was unheard of. "In 1996 the question did not exist," he suggested. "Every club was run within its resources. The Chelsea and the Man Citys are new problems in football."
Wenger may be correct, though it is mostly a matter of scale. A glance at the league table for September 1996 shows a much cosier, close-knit group of teams enjoying what looks like a more competitive and open contest – Wimbledon are in third place, for example, while Southampton and Coventry are still hanging around near the bottom – yet it is not quite true to say that all 20 teams were happily living within their resources.
At the bottom of the table sit Blackburn, with £15m in the bank following the sale of Alan Shearer to Newcastle in July, but without a win in eight games. The 1996 Blackburn had so far been the only team other than Manchester United to win the Premier League trophy, but now the glow of Jack Walker's money is just a memory, like Shearer and Kenny Dalglish, and the side will not be hitting those heights again. Rovers finished 13th in 1996-97 but were relegated two years later, and though now a Premier League fixture for a decade, along with Fulham and Bolton, they no longer even dream of winning the league. Their new owners might, though their fans knows it is not going to happen. The point is that even by the time Wenger arrived in England the model for Chelsea and City to follow had been set.
The brief Blackburn phenomenon does rather bear out Wenger's claim, that with most clubs on a roughly comparable financial footing in the mid-90s it was possible for the smallest and most unfashionable to get ahead if they could find money from somewhere, though Rovers were also unusual in having a benefactor who did not seem to mind that his investment in the team would not be sustainable in the long run and who wisely upgraded the stadium and training facilities as well. By 1996 other teams were spending money rather more frivolously. Wenger's first season was also the season when Middlesbrough brought in Fabrizio Ravanelli and others on silly wages, enjoying a brief few days in the sun at the start – they were ninth when Wenger arrived – before ending up relegated after being deducted three points for failing to fulfil a fixture at Blackburn. The team setting the pace at the very beginning of the season was Sheffield Wednesday, and look where they ended up, although it was Nottingham Forest and Sunderland who went down with Boro at the end of the season.
Looking at the 1996-97 table now, one immediately sees many more 'City' clubs than one does at present. Sheffield Wednesday, Leicester, Derby, Coventry, Nottingham, Southampton and Leeds are all represented, and it is not only the case that those large population areas are no longer to be seen in the English top flight, some have experienced double relegations and almost all have had severe financial difficulties, usually of their own making. Back in 1996-97, when Wigan won Division Three (ie, the bottom league in old money) on goal difference from Fulham, few would have predicted both clubs would not only reach the Premier League in a short time but go on to establish themselves quite comfortably.
Bolton won the First Division under Colin Todd in 1996-97 and even then were beginning to be regarded as a "division one and a half" outfit, but 14 years ago most people would have been baffled to find teams such as Stoke and Blackpool thriving in the top flight. Perhaps this is a consequence of the reality that no one from outside the Champions League bracket can really win anything any more, and clubs of moderate means and support find subsistence easier to deal with than clubs of a certain size who have known success in the past, and perhaps it is precisely this process, with Manchester City now joining Chelsea among the monied contenders, that is making life tough for Arsenal and prompting Wenger to think fondly of the past.
Maybe we all think fondly of the past. It is often preferable to viewing yet more pictures of City's millionaire reserves squabbling on the training pitch, their captain talking of quitting football, Liverpool fans forming hate campaigns against their own manager or Spurs and Blackburn (allegedly) fighting over a 34-year-old and barely fit David Beckham. The trouble is, none of us know how bad the future is going to be. Perhaps in 14 or 15 years we will be looking back to the present and coming over all nostalgic. It is hard to say with any certainty whether 1996-97 was any better than now, either financially or competitively, it was mostly just different. It was, however, an interesting and eventful season, and not just because Wenger arrived to transform Arsenal. Here are just a few of the headlines – you will have to make up your own minds.
United win title by seven points from Newcastle, their fourth in five seasons, though 75 points is lowest ever points total ... Kevin Keegan quits Newcastle in January, Eric Cantona retires from United in May... all four divisions are won by teams from a tiny area of the north-west – United, Bolton, Bury, Wigan ... Chelsea pay a club record £4.9m to Lazio for Roberto di Matteo ... United sign Karel Poborksky, Ronny Johnsen, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Jordi Cruyff ... Michael Owen and Jamie Carragher make debuts for Liverpool ... First Division Manchester City pay £1m for Paul Dickov, their manager, Alan Ball, resigns three days later, replacement Steve Coppell lasts barely a month ... season begins with David Beckham scoring from halfway against Wimbledon, ends with last games at Burnden Park and Roker Park ... Chelsea beat Middlesbrough in the FA Cup final.
Those were the days ... or were they?
Source: Paul Wilson, The Guardian on 5 Jan 11
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