Unresolved problems haunt this Premier League season

A dramatic weekend in the FA Cup only served to highlight the myriad issues facing the best league in the world’

- MIGUEL DELANEY

There was a strange feeling around some Premier League training grounds on Monday. It was one of refreshment. The sun was out for a lot of teams, and many players had gone two and a half weeks without a game. It represents the Premier League’s longest break since the summer.

Such a break would normally bring the same sense of refreshment to the actual games being played, but then this is also a strange time for the Premier League as a whole. Normally so used to being the biggest show around, “the world’s best league” last weekend witnessed the FA Cup bringing some actual storylines back to a relatively drab season.

There is the sense of 2024-25 winding down, rather than building to a crescendo.

The title race is all but over, and Liverpool’s recent drop-off has raised a slightly unfair debate over their standard as “champions” and whether this has been a good season in terms of overall quality. Such races are just the way it falls sometimes, and Arne Slot has obviously done a fine job with a strong team.

As impressively defiant as Liverpool have been in ending Manchester City’s long run at the top, it remains a problem that so few clubs can actually win the Premier League, and the wealthiest can just streak away in the campaigns when they get it right. The phoney conflict of the relegation battle has meanwhile brought more questions about the financial gap lower down the pyramid, all at the same time as there is ongoing debate about parachute payments.

Some in the Premier League would say that this is circumstantial. Ipswich Town weren’t quite ready to come up, and could no longer avail of their deal for Brighton’s recruitment analytics just at the point when signings were most important. Southampton have had their own long-term issues. The fear is that there is a trend emerging, though, and more of the same teams are coming up and then going straight back down.