An excellent piece and I’d point out that there is a lot of very careful Not Noticing going on when it comes to the equality of competition. (And to be fair, any game for the Big Clubs that isn’t against another Big Club is treated by their manager, players and armchair supporters as an irritating distraction from the midweek Champions League trip to Denmark or Belgium.)
As for Burnley, we were still a yo-yo club under Dyche, just that we got lucky in that there were usually other teams who were more inept and would go down. Once that stopped - and the squad ran out of steam for various reasons - our time was up. We could never consider ourselves established in the top flight, not even compared to, say, Crystal Palace, let alone West Ham or Everton.
And this precisely why I have very little time for the PL, its not a competition any more.
An excellent piece and I’d point out that there is a lot of very careful Not Noticing going on when it comes to the equality of competition. (And to be fair, any game for the Big Clubs that isn’t against another Big Club is treated by their manager, players and armchair supporters as an irritating distraction from the midweek Champions League trip to Denmark or Belgium.)
As for Burnley, we were still a yo-yo club under Dyche, just that we got lucky in that there were usually other teams who were more inept and would go down. Once that stopped - and the squad ran out of steam for various reasons - our time was up. We could never consider ourselves established in the top flight, not even compared to, say, Crystal Palace, let alone West Ham or Everton.