Leigh's Top 5 reasons smaller Premier League teams struggle

Leigh is the libertarian capitalist yin to my democratic socialist yang. It's widely known that there is a fair amount we don't agree on. When I lived with Levi, however, I found that there are few people I'd rather watch and chew the English football fat with. His knowledge and ability to deep-dive the beautiful game is, well, (kinda) beautiful. PS. #3 has driven me crazy for years. 

...

Why do teams slide from mid-table mediocrity to relegation scrappers? What's the reasoning behind reliable Premier League performers becoming future promotion chasing teams of the Championship?

At the beginning of the season, I predicted Everton to come 4th. In hindsight, that was a ludicrous decision, but should we have all seen their slump coming? Should we have seen the three promoted teams all out-performing experienced Premier League sides like Southampton, Stoke, West Brom, and West Ham?

1. Younger is better: footballers stop getting better with age long before 30.

The award for oldest line-ups churned out this season is about the only thing West Brom have won. The only teams to have churned out a first XI older than 29 years old are West Brom (and they've done it the most), West Ham, Everton, Crystal Palace, Stoke, and Watford - and the only one of those who has improved is Watford.

In fact, if West Brom swapped their points for those accrued by the 38 oldest average age team sheets, they'd still be bottom of the pile, with not enough points to have survived relegation in any season in Premier League history. Old teams send you backwards.

Starting line-ups older than 30 years in the 17/18 Premier League
Club	Opponent	Average age	Result
West Brom	Southampton	31.1	Lost
West Brom	Huddersfield	30.6	Lost
West Brom	Manchester City	30.5	Lost
West Brom	Chelsea	30.3	Lost
West Brom	Stoke	30.3	Lost
West Ham	Liverpool	30.2	Lost

When you graph all 20 teams across the whole season, the trendline makes it clear:

The Premier League is a running league; we've all heard the old cliché about how the continental European leagues are more technical and less physical, and there's a level to which that's true. More accurate is that the more you run, the more likely you are to avoid relegation, and teams full of players who are in their fourth decade aren't running the yards they used to. David Moyes' major reason for keeping West Ham up is his ability to get old tired legs running hard again - it'll be difficult to see his replacement doing something similar next season without a serious squad overhaul (again).

This might not be purely a physical thing; mentally, a lot of these players probably accept that they're either on their last decent paycheque or their career is heading downhill, and so the desire has begun to wane.

2. Players who've left Premier League clubs for cheap have left because they're not good enough to play at that level.

The conventional wisdom says that to avoid the drop, you need to sign proven Premier League performers if you're a newly promoted club. The performances of Brighton, Huddersfield, and Newcastle this year have shown that this is not the case.

I'd say you're better off signing a good young player from the Championship than signing a cheap seasoned professional. They're cheap for a reason.

There are still great bargains to be had among younger players, and there's always those that buck the trend, but generally, the experienced players leaving for low money are doing so because they can no longer cut it at the level their club aspires to be at.

Take West Brom as an example; Foster, Gibbs, Evans, Livermore, Sturridge, Barry, Chadli, Krychowiak, and Burke have all had top 4 finishes at previous clubs. A couple of those have had a poor run with injuries, but others (especially Krychowiak) have just had a poor run in general. These are seasoned professionals, many of whom have consistently been among the worst players on the park.

The signings made by Rafa Benitez, Chris Hughton, and David Wagner have strengthened clubs that were - on paper - not likely to survive, and gotten them across the line. But not one of the three newly promoted managers signed a single experienced Premier League player.

There were plenty of veterans on the market, given that Sunderland especially took an experienced side down to the Championship with them, and would've been looking to lower the wage bill by offloading players, plus there were plenty of out of contract players. But rather than look to the likes of Cuco Martina and Seb Larsson to fill the void - both were available as free transfers - the promoted clubs went shopping abroad and for players to compliment their squads which had performed so admirably to get them to the top flight last season.

You may remember just how dismal Sunderland were last season; a seemingly endless display of abject passing and defensive disorder, with Jermaine Defoe and Jordan Pickford bailing the team out fairly regularly at each end. That same Sunderland squad was effectively all up for sale; only Defoe and Pickford went to Premier League clubs. The majority of the squad stayed, and have now suffered the ignominy of consecutive relegations, while the club suffers the greater ignominy of continuing to pay Jack Rodwell.

In previous years, players from relegated clubs have done the merry-go-round. Leroy Fer, for example, has now been relegated three times and has spent time in the bottom four during each of his five Premier League seasons. Now that Swansea have been relegated, you assume that conventional wisdom will kick in next year and someone will sign Fer because he's a "battle hardened, relegation dog-fighter", to use a cliché that gets churned out every year in press conferences.

But if next year's promoted teams have done their homework, they won't be looking at the Premier League's experienced relegation dog-fighters, they'll be looking for hard-working, fast-running players on the up. Players like Fer are getting relegated regularly because they're just not good enough to keep a team up.

It's not just at the smaller clubs; across the board, signing players from a much larger club tends to end poorly. Take a look at footballwhispers.com's compilation of the worst players of the season:

Footballwhispers.com's worst XI of the season
Player	Position	Club	Previous clubs include
Joe Hart	GK	West Ham	Manchester City
Javier Manquillo	RB	Newcastle	Atletico Madrid
Kevin Wimmer	CB	Stoke	Tottenham
Shkodran Mustafi	CB	Arsenal	Inter Milan
Patrice Evra	LB	West Ham	Manchester United
Tiemoue Bakayoko	CM	Chelsea	Monaco
Grzegorz Krychowiak	CM	West Brom	Paris Saint-Germain
Renato Sanches	CM	Swansea	Bayern Munich
Kelechi Iheanacho	ST	Leicester City	Manchester City
Christian Benteke	ST	Crystal Palace	Liverpool
Guido Carillo	ST	Southampton	Monaco

Bakayoko and Carillo may have came from a club that sells its top players regularly (and the Chelsea midfielder is young), but regardless of that, this is a squad of players deemed surplus to requirements by Champions League clubs. Their lack of form should not be surprising.

3. You know exactly what you're going to get when you sign a British manager, so why sign someone who you know will not meet your expectations?

It's amazing how the likes of Sam Allardyce, Alan Pardew, David Moyes, Tony Pulis, and the like get hired and fired by the same person. What did their respective chairmen expect they were going to get when they hired these men? Take a look at their records over the last decade:

Win percentages at each club in the Premier League for British managers hired mid-season
Sam Allardyce	Alan Pardew	Mark Hughes	Paul Lambert	Roy Hodgson	David Moyes
Bolton  35.1 Newcastle          33.3 Blackburn          35.6 West Ham          37.6 Sunderland          29.0 Palace  37.5 Everton          38.5	West Ham          26.7 Charlton          20.0 Newcastle          37.4 Palace  40.2 West Brom          14.3	Blackburn          43.6 Man City          46.8 Fulham 32.6 QPR     23.5 Stoke   35.5 South'pton          30.0	Norwich 31.5 Aston Villa          29.6 Stoke   13.3	Blackburn          34.9 Fulham 39.1 Liverpool          41.9 West Brom          37.0 Palace  32.4	Everton 42.1 Man Utd            52.9 Sunderland            18.6 West Ham            29.0

Allardyce always gets roughly the same results everywhere he goes by playing dreary football, winning second balls, scoring off set pieces, and shutting up shop at the back. Why did Everton hire him - especially when he only ended with 0.01 more points per game than David Unsworth, the cheaper, well-loved, younger caretaker manager who was thrown into the deep end to fix Ronald Koeman's deterioration? 

Pardew was fired at West Ham, Newcastle, and Crystal Palace because they slipped into relegation under him, and his only attempt at getting a team out of relegation - Charlton in 06/07 - ended in failure. Why did West Brom hire him - especially when they had a relegation specialist in Tony Pulis, who has never been relegated as a player or manager, at the club already?

Hughes performs well with the players at his disposal, but give him long enough and he'll fail to meet expectations in the transfer market. All of his sides eventually were filled with his own signings, and they all disappointed. Hughes deserves his own table:

Mark Hughes in the transfer market
Club	Number of first-team players signed	Number of transfer windows	Number of Hughes signings on the pitch in final game before sacking
Blackburn	21	7	9
Manchester City	17	3	11
Fulham	9	2	3
QPR	15	2	7
Stoke	33	9	9

Hughes has made a career out of spending other people's money for mediocre results. After performing well at Blackburn, he has failed to hit expectations at four consecutive clubs, despite signing 74 players in 16 transfer windows (effectively more than nine players a year), and everywhere except Fulham, he's had a chance to craft his own team. At least he's not Paul Lambert!

Lambert is arguably the worst manager in the history of the Premier League; certainly none have had more chances and performed consistently worse. His finishes? 12th, 15th, 15th, 17th, 19th. The trend is poor. Why did Stoke hire him, when his average win percentage was not enough to get them the points they needed to survive?

What all of these clubs should have done is what Crystal Palace did - hire Mr. Dependable, Roy Hodgson. Hodgson, like Allardyce and Pulis, guarantees survival by accruing enough points per game everywhere he goes. Hodgson took over a team that had no points, no goals, and no fit strikers, yet was able to do what he'd done everywhere else - accumulate enough points to survive.

The point of all this is to say that when Stoke replaced Hughes with Lambert, and when West Brom replaced Pulis with Pardew, they signed their respective death certificates. Had they replaced Hughes with Hodgson or Allardyce, they would've surely survived.

British managers - with very few exceptions - produce predictable results. When they go to Sunderland, they get fewer points, because that club is a basket case. When they go to larger clubs, they underperform. Those who have always been defensive and boring, will continue to be defensive and boring. But you know what they're going to produce at a lower table club, because their records speak for themselves.

The chairmen must take the blame for poor management decisions.

4. January signings will not save you.

Premier League clubs spent £430m signing 57 players in the January transfer window, and for every Aubamayeng, there are a dozen flops. (Ask Manchester United fans if they think Alexis Sanchez is worth £20m in wages, not including bonuses, every year.) If you want to survive in the Premier League, you need to get your transfer business done in the summer window. Take a look at the signings (loan and permanent) made by the eight relegation threatened clubs:

Brighton & Hove Albion	Crystal Palace	Huddersfield Town	Southampton
Warren O'Hora Jurgen Locadia Bojan Radulovic Samoukovic Leonardo Ulloa	Jaroslaw Jach Erdal Rakip Alexander Sorloth Diego Cavalieri	Terence Kongolo Alex Pritchard	Guido Carrillo
Stoke City	Swansea City	West Brom	West Ham
Moritz Bauer Moussa Niakate Badou Ndiaye Kostas Stafylidis	Andre Ayew Andy King Jack Withers	Ali Gabr Daniel Sturridge	Oladapo Afolayan Jordan Hugill Joao Mario Patrice Evra

You'll notice that out of that list, only Ndiaye really made any noticeable improvement to his team, and they still went down anyway. But I've highlighted the strikers and wingers for a reason; these are the players whose goals and assists were meant to help secure survival. But look at their records:

Strikers and attacking midfielders signed in January
Player	Transfer fee	Minutes played	Goals	Assists
Pritchard	£12m	1003	1	1
Ayew	£18m	951	0	0
Carillo	£19.2m	452	0	1
Sorloth	£8.75m	360	0	0
Ulloa	£1m (loan fee)	262	1	0
Locadia	£14m	224	1	1
Sturridge	£2m (loan fee)	116	0	0
Hugill	£10m (approx)	22	0	0
Total	£84.95m	3390	3	3

Imagine spending £85m on a striker that plays almost every minute of the season, and gives you involvement in just six goals. For greater perspective, most pundits are calling Alvaro Morata a flop, but he scored 11 goals and mustered six assists in just over 2000 minutes, at a lower cost.

5. If mid-table is your goal, you will slide. Arrest the slide before you get to the relegation zone, not when you fall into the relegation zone.

It's a hard one here because as much as I think the short-termism of managerial sackings is causing serious long-term problems at many clubs, the writing is on the wall long before a team goes down. That may not require sacking the manager, but it will require real changes to improve the team.

For a team like Southampton, whose strategy of buying younger players and selling them on at a profit is probably not going to change, that will mean fixing their recruitment model so that they return to signing players that people will actually want like Wanyama, Van Dijk, Pelle etc; it's hard to imagine Liverpool calling up enquiring about the price for Redmond, Gabbiadini, or Boufal (the majority of their 16/17 expenditure).

It's not enough to aim for eighth and be satisfied with getting above 17th; it will catch up with you. There are six teams that went into that danger zone Let's look at the teams who are at risk of who've had four or more consecutive years in the division and finished bottom half this year:

Notice the trend is almost exclusively downward, and most of the aberrations can easily be explained: West Ham were single-handedly dragged up by Dimitri Payet setting Upton Park alight (how Hammers fans wish they could have both of those back), and Roy Hodgson arrested the slide for Crystal Palace this year that looked to be in full swing under Frank De Boer's disastrous tenure.

But outside of that, the three relegated teams had all been heading fairly consistently, and Southampton, Crystal Palace and West Ham are the prime candidates to have to worry about facing the drop next year.

Considering we just saw the three promoted teams stay up for only the third time in Premier League history, we'll have three new promoted teams joining the league next year, and three regulars struggling to fix a continual drift toward the bottom three, expect a nine-way (minimum) relegation battle next year. I, for one, can't wait.

Jacqueline's Top 5 Classic Hollywood Duos

I first met Jacqueline during a twentieth-century European undergraduate lecture at Macquarie University. It was clear that we were both history buffs and dedicated to our studies. It was a joy to discuss everything history with her and it has been a pleasure to see her bring her passion for the past to her teaching. After we both graduated from Macquarie, we started chatting about interests outside of our studies. It was around this time that I realised that Jacqueline and I share a passion for classic cinema and Hollywood. As you will soon see, my knowledge base doesn't come close to hers. For the past year, I have been bugging her to write something for my blog. My persistence has paid off. You're welcome, planet earth!

Cam: I couldn't resist getting my favourite classical actress in the post, Rita Hayworth

Duos, couples, twosomes, a pair. Whatever you call them, we humans seem to love them: strawberries and cream, yin and yang, gin and tonic, Ben and Jerrys. There is one particular type of duo that I particularly adore and that is the onscreen duo. The couple that lights up the silver screen again and again- the chemistry, the magic, the synchronisation. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are names that are forever entwined, just as their arms were as they danced about together across ten films. Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift were perhaps the most beautiful pair who graced films, with their soulful eyes, dark colouring and aloof personas available together over three films for the audience’s viewing pleasure. Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy were not only partners over nine films but also life partners for over a quarter of a century. Their beautiful final scene in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner never fails to bring a tear (or two!). Other real-life couples who often starred together include Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton (11 films), Stewart Granger and Jean Simmons (three films), Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford (four films), and Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh (three films). John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara were great cronies off-screen and were king and queen of the Wild West onscreen. Why haven’t I mentioned Rock Hudson and Doris Day as part of the great onscreen duos? Because I must admit I always think of them not as a duo, but as a trio. Let’s not forget that in each film Rock and Doris were in, Tony Randall was always right there with them (and if we’re honest, he was always stealing the show).

Top 5 Classic Hollywood Duos

1. Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland

Errol Flynn is my favourite actor to ever grace the silver screen, and Olivia de Havilland is my favourite actress to likewise bless us with her presence. It would make sense then that these two would make my ultimate dream team when it comes to onscreen duos. They starred in eight films together, the most famous and enduring of which is the 1938 Technicolor masterpiece The Adventures of Robin Hood. Errol is dashing, Olivia is beautiful, there are swordfights galore, a lot of witty dialogue, and a romance for the ages. What’s not to love? The first film this smashing duo made together was in 1935 and was the pirate swashbuckler Captain Blood, and was the first starring vehicle for both 25 year old Errol and 19 year old Olivia. By their next film The Charge of the Light Brigade, each was smitten with the other, but as Errol was married to French actress Lili Damita at the time, there wasn’t much poor Livvie could do. A succession of other swashbucklers and westerns followed, as well as the screwball comedy Four’s a Crowd, and the public just adored the couple together. Their last film, 1941’s They Died with Their Boots On was actually the first one I saw the pair in, and their chemistry and naturalness with each other is at its height. While the onscreen chemistry was certainly there, they public has been wondering for over 70 years about their off-screen relationship. In his autobiography My Wicked, Wicked Ways, Errol admits to being in love with Olivia, and she has given several interviews saying she was mad about him. Come on Olivia, won’t you tell us now?

2. Walter Pidgeon and Greer Garson

MGM famously claimed to have “more stars than there are in Heaven”, and two of these bright sparks were Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon. The genuine friendship felt between these two just radiates off the screen. It isn’t a passionate sizzling chemistry like Errol and Olivia, but instead a steadfast and gentle one. The most endearing aspect of their relationship was that the two remained life-long friends and were always there for each other; Walter once remarked that he had done eight movies with the delightful Greer and never had a bad word between them. Their first film together was the 1941 tear-jerking melodrama Blossoms in the Dust, where Walter’s patient and dependable presence perfectly balanced with Greer’s light-heartedness, as it would do to perfection across all their other films together. They tried out dramas together, sentimental films, biopics such as 1943’s Madame Curie, and even a comedic turn in Julia Misbehaves (with a teenaged Elizabeth Taylor and a gorgeous Peter Lawford). However their most enduring film is the 1942 patriotic wartime drama Mrs Miniver. Greer took home the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as dutiful British housewife Kay Miniver, and set a record for the longest Oscar acceptance speech. Winston Churchill himself claimed the film did more for the British war effort than a flotilla of destroyers. Greer and Walter sure knew how to make screen magic! One of their most interesting screen turns is 1949’s adaptation of John Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga in That Forsyte Woman. Greer plays her usual charming and independent role, but it is Walter who plays against type as the bohemian and outcast painter. (Side note- Errol Flynn also plays against type as the stoic and domineering Soames Forsyte. Legend has it Walter and Errol were tired of being typecast and decided to swap roles themselves). My personal favourite of the eight films Greer and Walter made together is their last, Scandal at Scourie. It is an unassuming little film about a childless Protestant couple who decide to adopt at Catholic orphan girl in a small Canadian town. While it was never going to make it to the top of any great films list, its innocence is what makes it special. After 1953, the Garson-Pidgeon professional partnership came to an end, but their friendship continued until Walter’s death. I still have one question, if Greer Garson was known as the Duchess of MGM, does that make Walter the Duke? I think so.

3. William Powell & Myrna Loy

Here they are folks, Nick and Nora Charles themselves. How could these two not make my list? This duo made so many films together – fourteen to be exact – and had such great chemistry that fans were convinced, utterly convinced, that they were married in real life. Sorry to dash anyone’s illusions, but they weren’t married; however like my previous couple, they remained lifelong friends. These two were an outstanding blend of charm, sophistication, wit, elegance and zaniness. Like all those cocktails they threw back in the Thin Man movies, they were a perfect concoction. Of their relationship, William commented “We weren’t acting. We were just two people in perfect harmony.” They made perfectly good films without each other, but it was like pumpkin pie without the pinch of nutmeg- something was just missing.  William Powell and Myrna Loy most famously teamed up to play detective Nick Charles and his socialite wife Nora (and let’s not forget Asta!) in the six Thin Man films from 1934 – 1947. As “Nicky” and “Mommy”, they created movie magic and some of the best detective films to grace the screen, each film containing glorious innuendos, witty repartee, slapstick scenarios, and copious amounts of alcohol. Aside from the Thin Man series, my favourite of their films is the 1936 screwball comedy Libeled Lady co-starring Spencer Tracy and Jean Harlow (who was in a relationship with Powell at the time, and later engaged to him before her untimely death). The film brilliantly allows William Powell to show off his physical comedy skills as he memorably attempts to go fly-fishing to impress Myrna Loy’s character. As always with this particular duo, laughs and hilarity ensue.

4. Clark Gable and Joan Crawford

Out of all of MGM’s stars in heaven, these two were the hottest; hot enough to nearly burn tinsel town to the ground. They were hot and heavy onscreen, and they were hot and heavy off-screen. The smouldering tension between the King of Hollywood and the most glamourous of leading ladies was a gossip columnist’s dream. Clark Gable and Joan Crawford made eight movies together during their time together at MGM, and movie-goers couldn’t get enough of them. The best of their films are those made in the pre-Code era, as they are filled with lots of passions, innuendos and a hoard of other intense moments showcasing the heat between the duo. By the making of their 1933 film Possessed, these two were engaged in an affair so scandalous that his wife and her husband were forced to approach Louis B. Mayer himself in order to seek help throwing cold water on the whole thing. At the time Joan was part of real Hollywood royalty, married to Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. making powerhouse silent screen couple Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford her in-laws. Clearly the man dubbed the King of Hollywood was more enticing than the Pickfair crowd. The affair between Gable and Crawford continued for years, and across several marriages for each of the stars. In their 1936 screwball comedy Love on the Run, the duo co-star with one of Crawford’s future husbands, Franchot Tone. Poor Franchot doesn’t know how to keep the girl in the film, and apparently didn’t know how to keep her from Gable in real life either. By the time Crawford’s MGM star waned and she made the transfer to Warner Bros., the Gable-Crawford affair was over, but the magic of it is there for us to watch time and time again.

5. Shirley Temple and Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson

This duo holds a very special place in my heart, and while not what you would typically think of under the phrase “film duo”, this little girl and this talented gentleman were one of the most innovative and special duos ever to appear together on the silver screen. Shirley Temple was the darling of America, beloved by FDR, protected by J. Edgar Hoover, and adored by millions across the world. Bill Robinson was a black vaudevillian who had appeared in a handful of [mainly RKO] films. What could these two possibly have in common? Dancing, ladies and gentlemen. The most glorious tap dancing. They first starred together in the 1934 film The Little Colonel where they famously tap dance up and down a flight of stairs together holding hands. Holding hands? Shocking! Shocking! In fact, it really was shocking to many audience members at the time, and in many states this scene was cut from the film entirely. It was the first time a white person and black person held hands on film. Legend has it that the whole thing came about during rehearsals when little Shirley was nervous about forgetting her steps so kind-hearted Bojangles held her hand to squeeze it to help her keep in time with her steps. Crew members freaked at the gesture, but good old Mrs Temple told them to get a hold of themselves, if it helped make her daughter feel comfortable then that’s all there was to it. They appeared in three more films together, The Littlest Rebel, Just Around the Corner and my favourite, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. As well as dancing in their films, they often sang songs together, such as the catchy little ditty “Polly Wolly Doodle” in The Littlest Rebel. This duo remained friends for the rest of their lives, and Shirley claimed in her autobiography that Bill was one of the best friends she ever had because they both knew what it was to feel utterly isolated in the industry. If you’re ever having a bad day just pop onto Youtube and watch these two dance up those steps. It’ll put a smile on that dial quicker than you can say “Polly Wolly Doodle”.