English football, whether rightly or wrongly, are generally perceived to have been underachieving in this decade. For all the money that sets them eons apart from the rest of the European leagues, the quality of football in the league (not competitiveness) has been underwhelming. The less said about the despicable displays in Europe, the better.
Last season perhaps saw a refreshing change. A historical upset of the odds by Leicester City has forced a rethink from all of the top six, and the quality of football in the Premier League has improved leaps and bounds. Yet, there is a lingering feeling that more can be achieved - in comparison to how Spanish and German clubs fare with respect to their stature and spending abilities.
Here, we take a look at the contenders for the unwelcome tag of the most underachieving club in England:
#5 Queens Park Rangers
At the end of the 2012-13 season, Queens Park Rangers finished bottom of the Premier League, in the process getting relegated to the Championship. In 2014, Atletico Madrid bowed out with their heads held high from the Champions League final, despite losing against Real Madrid. It was later revealed that Atletico had a wage bill that was 30% less than that of QPR. Take a minute for that to sink in.
QPR, taken over in August 2011 by Malaysian entrepreneur Tony Fernandes, spent a reported £46 million over two seasons under Mark Hughes and Harry Redknapp. Signings like Park Ji-Sung, Esteban Granero and Loic Remy had the feel of real coups – and Rangers seemed on paper, a well assembled mid-table squad.
But their array of talent proved too meek for the rigours of a relegation battle in the Premier League; with bulging pockets and long term contracts, no player seemed truly interested in the fate of the club.
In March 2015, the owners wrote off loans worth £60 million, easing the mounting debt and providing hope for a better future. With the £100+ million that separates contesting in the Premie League and the Championship, it is tempting to throw caution to the wind while spending for survival from English football’s top flight, but QPR's experience should warn off the rest from reckless and unaccounted spending.
The London club look to have turned a corner and have spent responsibly, lately.
#4 Blackburn Rovers
Only six clubs have won the English title in the Premier League era. One of them is on course to putting up the worst Premier League title defence in history, but another one has messed up way, way more than that. Step in Blackburn Rovers – currently finding themselves on course for relegation from the Championship nearly 22 years after winning the Premier League title.
Even though far away from the lofty heights of the European places, Blackburn Rovers was a solid mid-table team as late as December 2010 under the no nonsense stewardship of Sam Allardyce. In walked new owners Venky's, an Indian poultry firm, with bullish talk of landing the likes of Ronaldinho and Beckham.
In retrospect, such talk has come to represent everything their ownership has meant to the club – false promises and a failure to understand and respect the ambition of the club.
As Blackburn Rovers fans step up the protest against their lackadaisical owners, the club serves as a stark reminder of the potential consequences of ignorant ownership. Next time you root for your club to be taken over by a rich foreign investor, remember – Blackburn's glitter definitely did not turn out to be gold.
The Lancashire club will win the prize hands down in the event of relegation to League One, but for now, we will give them the benefit of the doubt.
#3 Newcastle United
A club of Newcastle's fan base should not even be contemplating relegation from the top flight, let alone a stint in the Championship. Blessed with an illustrious past featuring the likes of Alan Shearer and Andy Cole, current owner Mike Ashley has rightly received plenty of ire from the supporters for the club’s current situation.
With a stadium capacity of over 50,000, St. James Park has the setting in place to grow into one of the most intimidating atmospheres around Europe. Despite the loosening of purse strings in the last couple of years, the return on investment is hardly visible (although signings like Dwight Gayle and Jonjo Shelvey inspire hope that lessons are being learned from past mistakes).
Premier league standings of 16th, 10th, 15th and 18th at the last four times of asking, tells the whole story. Alan Pardew, despite plenty of promise after a 5th place finish in 2011-12, eventually faded out.
The appointment of Rafael Benitez looks like a masterstroke – but until Newcastle establishes itself as a solid mid-table club, at the very least, you can expect their name to keep cropping up amongst the list of underachievers.
#2 Arsenal
It would have been unthinkable to imagine Arsenal in this plight when they lost unluckily to Barcelona in the 2006 Champions League final. 11 years later, manager Arsene Wenger finds himself with a team that has repeatedly failed to mount sustained title challenges, the FA Cup glories of 2014 and 2015 desperately masking a period of underachievement.
In the 2013-14 and 2015-16 season, Arsenal seemed on the cusp of winning the title in the first half of the season, blowing teams away with beautiful football to go with results. Yet, come May, nothing more than a sense of relief seems to pervade throughout Emirates, that too at the meagre achievement of yet another season in the top four.
A confident stroll into the market with £90m+ outlay during the summer of 2016 generated a lot of hype – but it is safe to say any final remaining traces of it have died down in the aftermath of the 5-1 CL humiliation at the hand of Bayern.
The only sense in which Arsenal has been doing justice to its potential is in business terms. Stan Kroenke might beg to differ, but the decision to offer Arsene another contract at the end of the season represents a lack of ambition and vision.
It is difficult to remember the last time Arsenal finished a season with all its fans happy. With the time and stability that has been granted to Wenger (and of late, the money), he is fast running out of excuses for underachieving in England as well as Europe.
A squad featuring a very strong spine in Cech, Koscielny, Bellerin, Cazorla, Ozil and Sanchez must simply do much better – at the very least, they should do better than conceding the title by 10 points to Leicester City.
#1 Liverpool
26 years without a league title says it all. A club whose name was synonymous to success in the 70s and 80s, it speaks volumes about the club's current stature that a hint of a title race is viewed as a significant overachievement.
Regulars for European nights in the 2000s, even European football has turned into a luxurious dream for the Kop at the moment. It doesn't feel right when the floodlights light up Anfield and the raucous fanbase rattle the rooftops just for an uninspiring Europa League contest.
A couple of £100m+ spending sprees, one each under former managers Kenny Dalglish and Brendan Rodgers, inexplicably set the progress of the club back by a number of years.
With the kind of money that Liverpool has made in the transfer market with sales (£50m each for Torres and Sterling, £65m for Suarez) means any talk of amount spent alone is skewed – yet Liverpool FC has been the story of a string of missed opportunities over the last two decades. Liverpool fans, although painfully, have started to accept that their route back to the top will be long and arduous.
