The Big Four! A Fable or Reality?

A lot has been said and heard about the dominance of four clubs in the English Premier League - Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool. The title race in the past decade has been or more has been shared among them (excluding Liverpoool).

This four teams has continued to dominate the Premier league because of their big purse which allows them to buy the best players from all over the world at cut throat prices. Many Premiership Managers have over the past years complained about this phenomenom and the growing influence of just a few having so much money to spend thereby making it imposible for the other clubs to challenge for the title year in year out. Though some people has debunked this talk.

The latest coach to lend credence to this is the Newcastle Manager, Kevin Keegan. He came out to say after his Newcastle side had been beaten by Chelsea on Monday that his team were a million miles away from challenging for the title or even breaking into the Champions League spot. This comment caused a lot of grief among the Newcastle Management especially the Chairman and owner of the club, Mike Ashley.

The reality on ground supports this arguement that with unlimited cash to outspend the other clubs in getting the best legs, a gulf will always emerge amongst this clubs. But is is gainsaying to note that it is not only in the English Premiership that this occurs. Other European leagues are faced with this issue of big clubs, small clubs.
In Italy, they have the Big Three - Juventus, Inter Milan and AC Milan. Spain has the Big Two - Real Madrid and Barcelona. In Germany Bayern Munich has been the most dominant.

We can only hope that at one time or the other one of the so called smaller clubs would be able to break this dominance. It has been proved by teams like Blackburn, Everton, Villareal, Valencia that this monopoly can be broken even if it doesn't occur often.