The EPL is still the biggest show in town, but it can feel like it’s losing the one thing football needs to stay honest: jeopardy. You look at the churn of managers, the constant moaning from fanbases, and you start to wonder if all that money is actually improving the product or just inflating expectations nobody can meet.
The financial gulf is obvious enough. English clubs can outspend most leagues without even breaking sweat. But the point that gets missed is this: it’s not automatically good for England either. When the rewards are spread too widely, the pressure at the top end changes, and so does the behaviour of clubs drifting around the middle.
When everyone qualifies, what’s the point?
The idea of so many European places sounds great until you step back and ask what it does to the league. If a big chunk of the table is qualifying for something, the season can start to feel like it has soft landings everywhere. Finishing fifth used to be a big deal because it meant you’d chased down a target. Now it can feel like you’ve simply survived.
And that filters into everything. Fans get angry because standards drop, but clubs still talk themselves into “progress” because a European spot is sitting there anyway. It’s hard to maintain proper hunger when the bar keeps shifting closer.
Write-off culture and a season that drifts
We’ve all seen teams hit a bad patch and decide the run-in isn’t worth the pain. That’s where it starts to look broken. If a club can more or less write off months of football, then what exactly are supporters paying for? You can still get the odd heavyweight title race, but the rest of the division often feels like it’s just filling space between TV slots.
Even when sides have been poor, a European place can still be within reach. That removes the edge. No real fear, no real urgency, and far too many dead rubber weekends for a league that sells itself as nonstop drama.
Scotland’s quality debate, but the excitement is real
In Scotland we’re under no illusions about overall quality compared to England. The budgets aren’t comparable, and the squad depth isn’t the same. But excitement is a different conversation. If you’ve got several sides still within touching distance at this stage, that matters. It keeps pressure on, it keeps crowds engaged, and it makes every dropped point feel heavy.
That’s the irony. For all the EPL’s money, it can still end up flatter than it should, while our league, with all its flaws, can deliver genuine tension week to week. Maybe football’s lesson is simple: without consequences, even the richest league can start to feel strangely hollow.
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