After watching Manchester City slaughtered 0-0 by Liverpool this afternoon, I’m starting to think that as a contest, the Premier League is a dodo. Yes, it’s extinct as a contest. Instead, we now have a four-team competition involving a quartet of mega-rich impregnables - plus a 16-horse race to pick up the flotsam that Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool aren’t interested in.

City, ostensibly the fifth-best team in the league (certainly judging by their current placing) were delighted with a point they deserved only for their sheer stubbornness in defence - and a world-class display by skipper Richard Dunne at the heart of the rearguard.

Liverpool (the away team, mind) had 17 shots to City’s two. And with Sven-Goran Eriksson’s men unable to muster a single effort on target all afternoon, it’s a wonder Pepe Reina didn’t fall asleep in the Liverpool goal.

'Apart from the pure financial aspect, is it really such a disaster to be playing in the Championship - and competing for something tangible?'


The match was as one-sided as a goalless draw can be - and demonstrated the gulf in class between the English game’s four giants and the also-rans.

We all know either Man United or Arsenal are going to win the league…and that one of the big four will also take every other piece of meaningful silverware. Perm one from four for the FA Cup - and of course it’s going to be Arsenal or Chelsea’s Carling Cup again.

It will be the same next year, and the year after…and the year after that. Because the reality is that the League of Four is a separate entity to the League of Mere Mortals.

All that teams like Spurs, Man City, Everton, Aston Villa, Newcastle and the rest have to play for is a miserable UEFA Cup place. And unless one of them can somehow turn that Big Four into a Big Five, that’s all they’ll be playing for until kingdom come.

For now, every player’s dream is to join one of those big boys and win something. So the cream of the talent will inevitably keep drifting to the Emirates, Old Trafford, Anfield and Stamford Bridge at ridiculous prices only the Abramoviches and Glazers of this world can afford.

As a consolation, there is, of course, the excitement at the other end of the table, with a third of the league looking frantically over their shoulders at the abyss to relegation. But, apart from the pure financial aspect, is it really such a disaster to be playing in the Championship - and competing for something tangible?

If we are honest about it, the second-tier league is much more competitive than the Prem - and the teams so well-matched that anyone can beat anyone else on a given day.

The season is more than half over, yet - with the possible exception of West Brom - few people could name a team likely to be among the three going up to the Premier League next season.

Long-time leaders Watford look like blowing up - very much like my own team Cardiff did a year ago after leading the league by six points at one stage - and no other side has, as yet, shown any real consistency.

If I had to put money on anyone, I’d have a little wager on Crystal Palace, who have been revitalised by the arrival of Neil Warnock and are positively zooming up the table. They are still outside the play-off places…but such is the competition that positions at this stage are meaningless.

Take Cardiff, for example. Less than a month ago, manager David Jones was said to be one game from the sack as his side lingered just above the relegation trio. Now, thanks to four wins in the last six games, they are only five points off the play-offs and Davy Jones’s locker looks as secure as it ever was.

These Championship outfits are not meaningless clubs, either. Twelve of them - half the league - have themselves been in the Premier League in the past few years. So why this obsession with those elite 20, half of whom are no more or less salubrious than their Championship counterparts?

Are Fulham a bigger club than Wolves? Bolton bigger than West Brom? Wigan more influential than Sheffield United? Not in my book.

Yet pick up any football magazine these days and you’ll struggle to find a line of copy about a non-Prem club.

Perhaps it’s time for the football world to get real…and realise that there is life outside the Big Four. If I had my way, I’d float the Arsenals and Man Uniteds off into a Super League of their own with the Real Madrids, Barcelonas and Milans of this world.

Then, while they are competing to the title of the Richest Club in the World, we can have a proper Premier League …with every team in with a chance of honours.