[photo by Crystian Cruz]

• by Braydon de Liberato, writing from Canada

We’ve all heard it before: the Premiership is unbalanced. All of the big teams are getting better and teams that can’t rival their spending are doomed to mediocrity, or worse, relegation. But this season, there is a changing of the guard in the Premier League, as several top 10 teams are on the low end of the spending spectrum, and maybe more surprising; some of the highest spending teams are bottom half in the table.

Firstly, we must establish which teams are “overachieving” in terms of league position relative to squad cost. The league table as of Jan. 14 is below, along with the total cost of each team’s squad. The differential column shows the difference between the team’s place in the standings and the squad cost rank.

As you can see, most of the teams are within 3 spots of where they “should” be, relative to squad cost. However, there are some very surprising teams. The teams that can be considered to be “overachieving” are Arsenal, Bolton, Blackpool, and Blackburn. We are now going to look team-by-team to see what we can attribute to their success.

Arsenal
Arsenal has been a successful team for some time now, but haven’t won a trophy since 2005. They are a team built by Arsene Wenger, and have played an attractive, attacking brand of football since the Frenchman’s arrival in 1996. They are a model of consistency, having finished top 4 every season since 1997-98, and having steadily decreased their squad cost every year since 2002-03 with little, if any, decrease in the product they’ve put out. It really is business as usual this year for the gunners, so don’t expect squad cost to interfere with their success.

Bolton
Bolton is a particularly interesting case, as this is their first time in the top 10 of the Premier League since Sam Allardyce was in charge. They have, however, kept a similar mantra to what Big Sam had transfer-wise, having still effectively transferred in underrated players as well as utilizing Allardyce’s players from his stint in charge. They, unlike Arsenal, play a disciplined, defensive style that is only broken by the strike duo of Kevin Davies and Johan Elmander. This is, in closing, a budget team drove by organizational discipline.

Blackburn
Of course, the mention of Sam Allardyce and Bolton proves his reputation as a manager who gets the most out of his teams, as until his sacking, he was making Blackburn punch well above their weight, As at Bolton, Blackburn is made on efficient, direct football, savvy transfers, and a reliance on an above-average goaltender to back them up when it counts. Blackburn is the 2nd most efficient team in the Premier League, in 10th place in the table despite having the 2nd cheapest lineup.

Blackpool
Blackpool is the most surprising of the group, as they are in the first year of the club’s history in the Premier League. Relegation favorites in the championship in 2009-10, they finished in 6th place, winning the playoff and granting promotion into the Premier League. They have not, however, let their new sources of revenue spoil their team, as they are still mainly the same team from the season prior. Blackpool’s manager, Ian Holloway, has set the Tangerines up to be a successful team for years to come.

It is merely a formality to ask whether these teams can keep their form up, as since the Premier League is past the halfway point, their places are all but secured in the top 10. It is therefore a better question to ask whether this will continue to happen for unfashionable teams year-in, year-out. I believe that with the introduction of FIFA’s Financial Fair Play, it most certainly will, as big teams will no longer have the financial muscle to outspend their opponents, and will now have to rely on financial and tactical savvy to hold up their positions in the league, something I have trouble seeing several teams to in the future. But only time will tell, as profit-based salary caps, like the one in MLB, didn’t stop the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox from outdoing their competition.

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