The big six and the other 14 — the Premier League’s identity is changing.
At the end of last season, 6th place Manchester United were a comfortable seven points clear over Everton in 7th, and a massive 23 points ahead of Southampton in 8th. Those gaps symbolise the drawbridge that has been pulled up from the Premier League’s middle class — stark and sudden after Leicester City’s miracle.
Their superior resources have been fortified by some good recruitment, and installing some of the best coaches from the continent — Klopp, Conte & Guardiola joining the experienced Mourinho & Wenger as well as one of the most promising young managers in world football, Pochettino, at the league’s biggest six clubs.
We’re almost halfway through the season. After Manchester City’s stunning 4–1 victory over Spurs, all of the established “big six” have now played one another. From those results, we can make a mini-league and analyse what it means in a wider context.
There are a couple of striking things about the table. One is that it mirrors the order of the actual “big six” table, save for swapping Chelsea and Manchester United around in 2nd and 3rd. The other, of course, is Burnley gatecrashing the party — more on them to come.
THE TITLE RACE.
Manchester City’s 100% record against the league’s finest feels about right for a team who are smashing records — the aggregate score of 15–3 is just one demonstration of their quality. To put it in context, their total of 52 points is 10 more than Arsenal’s Invincibles had at the same stage of the season.
They have consolidated those big results by sweeping almost everyone else, too. In 18 games, they have beaten 17 of the 19 other teams in the teams in the division — (peculiarly, Ronald Koeman’s) Everton are the only team to keep them from victory. Newcastle will probably meet the same fate as everyone else when they meet for the first time on December 27th.
Pep Guardiola has crafted one of the best teams in Europe, arguably the first Premier League team that can hold a candle to his Barcelona or Bayern Munich. For those who looked to denigrate his achievements by patronisingly characterising the likes of Mallorca or Augsburg as walkovers, now must either concede they were wrong or double down and apply the same logic to Leicester and Watford.
Manchester United have improved where they often struggled last season — beating the clubs they should be beating. In the 13 games they’ve played against teams outside the big six, they have won 11 — dropping just five points, to Stoke and Huddersfield. That’s an average of 2.61 points per game, which is ordinarily more than enough to be challenging for the title.
But their competitors, City in particular, also pick up so many points against the rest of the league (2.84 points per game) that to be challenging, a team needs to be picking up more points in these big-six key fixtures.
In the mini-table of big six results, Mourinho’s team are eight points behind Guardiola’s, which makes up the bulk of the total 11-point gap between them.
This is encapsulated by Romelu Lukaku. A big reason they’ve improved on last season, where they dropped a lot more points to teams lower down the table, the likes of West Ham and Swansea. In the league, he’s scored or assisted 14 goals this season — only Salah has more (17) — but only one of those was in the decisive “big six” games, assisting Anthony Martial’s winner against Spurs.
THE REST, AND EUROPE.
Needless so say, with the Manchester clubs keeping such a relentless pace, any points dropped against the bottom half of the table are critical. Chelsea have won 10 of the 13 games they’ve played against teams outside of the “big six”, but dropped nine points — against West Ham, Burnley and Crystal Palace — and that means they’re out of the title race.
The same applies to Arsenal, Liverpool and Spurs, who have lost ten, ten and thirteen points apiece to teams outside the “big six”. Any such losses would need to be compensated by doing exceptionally well in the “big six” meetings — which they’ve all been unable to do. Even Chelsea’s two wins and two draws out of five isn’t enough.
Another interesting angle is how this applies to European football.
Spurs poor record domestically provides a stark contrast to the steps they’ve taken forward in Europe, having beaten Madrid and Dortmund to top their difficult group.
With five English clubs in the last 16, and many having a favourable draw, there could well be four English clubs in the last eight of the Champions League. The form of these games could well tell us something about how teams will challenge come the latter stages of the competition — which bodes very well for City.
BURNLEY
It says something for the big six’s dominance that just keeping pace come Christmas is an impressive feat, but it’s an impressive feat nonetheless. This time last year they had already broken ahead — Everton, in 7th, were 7 points behind Manchester United in 6th, after 18 games.
They have already beaten Chelsea, and drawn with Liverpool and Spurs — those five points drawing them level with Liverpool and ahead of Arsenal and Spurs if they were put into the above “mini-table”, having played the same number of games (they have yet to play Manchester United). They have supplemented this by consistently good results against teams that they should theoretically be on a level-playing field with — including an unbelievable six 1–0 wins.
It will be difficult to sustain a challenge, but it’s a good thing for the league if they’re able to do so. They can offer inspiration to other clubs, that with a clear idea of how to play the game, and canny investment — there is a chance to challenge.
Domestically, midtable Premier League clubs have one advantage over the big teams they hope to chase — no European distractions. The television money and riches they receive can only be dreamt of by their continental counterparts. There is a genuine opportunity to build something interesting, but no one else is doing it. Credit to Burnley for doing so.
There is good and bad in this new big six dominance.
Let’s not forget the era of the “Sky Four”, where the same four teams — Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal — occupied the same four European places for nearly a decade. The rise of Spurs and Manchester City have caused an exciting and unpredictable race for top-level European football — the number of clubs aiming for Champions League football outnumber the places that are available.
That era also saw Mourinho and Benitez at the forefront of tactical innovation, and as such their approach often saw the big games played out as edgy, niggly games that would end 1–0.
Now, for title challengers, Guardiola’s barnstorming City are shifting the paradigm of what constitutes a “good” result, and the appropriate approach to take in certain fixtures. For example, Manchester United can no longer afford to play defensive football against Liverpool. To keep up with City, a point won at Anfield can no longer be considered valuable.
This means that those blockbuster fixtures — the kind that fill up a Sunday on Sky Sports — are largely living up to the hype. Teams come into these fixtures looking to win, and this usually leads to entertaining, attacking displays — the vast majority this season have been memorable, often high-scoring, encounters.
But can interest in the top of the league be sustained on a minority of high-profile fixtures? There are only 30 of these games every season — and 168 fixtures for the top six against the “other” teams, where they are routinely get results, often at a canter.
This season, Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea have played 39 games between them against the teams outside “the big six”. In those, they’ve failed to win on six occasions.
That’s just 15%.
Go lower, and include all six — Arsenal, Spurs and Liverpool too — and there have been a total of 20 occasions (out of 78 games) where the big six have failed to beat an opponent from the other 14.
Only 25% of the time.
English football, for the first time this decade, can say it boasts some of the best teams in Europe. But as the top clubs have made those steps forward, they have left the rest of the English top flight in their wake.
There may be little unpredictability, but there is still great entertainment to be found in any of the top six on their day, clicking into first gear, and swotting aside a Swansea or Bournemouth (as City and Liverpool majestically did last week).
But is this any different to watching Barcelona demolish Deportivo? PSG dismantling Angers? Bayern thrashing Freiburg?
The Premier League is exceptionally self-regarding, but it now faces an identity crisis. Competitiveness, the idea that “anyone can beat anyone”, has been central to it’s prestige. But that no longer bears scrutiny — with Manchester City having the same 11 point lead as PSG and Bayern Munich in their “one-team leagues”, and the other big teams dominating the rest of the competition, what does the Premier League offer that no other league can?
