As Fulham and West Brom come down, is the gap getting bigger?

This was always going to be a football season like no other.   The impact of the Covid pandemic was going to give a strange feeling to the season with it being considerably shorter than others and off the back of one of the shortest close seasons.

But when you take a look at the end of season league tables you see two sides in Norwich City and Watford bounce directly back to the Premier League at the first time of asking whilst Fulham and West Brom are relegated after just one season in the Premier League.

And with Bournemouth holding one of the four play off spots they could ensure that all three sides who came down at the end of last season all bounce back at the first opportunity which makes you wonder whether the gap between the Championship and the Premier League is getting bigger.

Maybe not at the bottom end of the Premier League but it does seem harder and harder to retain Premier League status at the first attempt and certainly harder then we made it look when we first won promotion in 2011.

For Fulham it is a second successive one year stay in the Premier League.   They were promoted in 2018, relegated in 2019 before promotion in 2020 and now immediate relegation.   Four years, two in each division but an immediate promotion is followed by an immediate relegation.

West Brom have just been relegated from the Premier League for the 5th time in the last 19 years whilst Norwich have just achieved their fourth promotion in ten seasons, only once having survived more than a year in the Premier League.

It is difficult to know whether the gap is getting bigger or whether these sides are making bad decisions when they go up but to see two sides come straight back down (and being joined by Sheffield United who won promotion two years ago) you start to wonder whether it is now becoming a tactic to go up but not make the mistakes of some clubs in the past and spend the money to try and stay there at all costs.

There is definitely a lesson in there for the Swans if we wanted one should we win promotion.   Immediate relegation is not necessarily the issue particularly if you can take the lessons from the likes of Fulham, Norwich and Watford and push on with a good season straight after.

In fairness to the Swans we have retained good league positions in all of our three seasons since relegation which bodes well for the future and I do think that lessons of the past will be learned should we go up in so much as we will not throw the money around to try and stay there.

And whilst the recent stats may start to look as if the gap between the Championship and the Premier League may be getting bigger and certainly you would point to the sides that have stayed up over recent seasons being heavily backed financially to do so – a good position to be in but as we know all too well if you spend the money badly then it can easily go wrong very quickly (even Sheffield United are a good example of that this season)

It will be interesting to see how those coming down fare next season and the same for those who go up as the game returns to some level of normality and crowds come back into the game meaning the financial differences become slightly smaller.  As stated at the start this was a different season all round and was always going to be but there is becoming a trend of clubs flitting between the top of the Championship and the bottom of the Premier League.   Let’s see if that continues?