Should The Winner Take It All?

I was lucky enough to be at the Championship Play-Off Final at Wembley as Aston Villa made it back to the Premier League at the third attempt. It was a tense affair, leading me to wonder if the £170m match is a little too all-or-nothing for its own – and football’s – good.

My expectations for a classic game weren’t high. On a weekend when Charlton and Sunderland met in a play-off final again, 21 years after that 4-4 classic that the Londoners won 7-6 on penalties, it was obvious that football has moved on so much in that time and too much for a repeat of that kind of goal-filled bonanza.

Last season, this game had ended 1-0 to Fulham (with Villa the losers) and the year before that, Huddersfield and Reading had played one of the least inspiring matches since the play-offs began in 1987. In the seasons prior to that, one or two goals had decided the match. Monday’s three goals was the highest-scoring final since West Ham edged Blackpool in 2012. Before that there had been fantastic, goal feasts with Swansea beating Reading (4-2) and Blackpool defeating Cardiff (3-2) but these open, attacking contests seems to have become a thing of the past.

If this year’s match was anything to go by, then the correlation between the amount of money on offer to the winners and the scarcity of goals/chances/free-flowing football cannot be ignored.

It feels like money is at the root of it all. But then, how can it not be?

For Villa and Derby, the prize was so big that losing didn’t bear contemplating. Derby have spent big over the years (especially after their 2014 final defeat to a last minute winner) and wanted to recoup that, plus with Frank Lampard’s first season as a manager showing such promise, then the money would come in handy to match his ambitions and also keep him out of the clutches of his beloved-Chelsea (who may soon be looking for a new manager themselves).

For Villa, it felt even more important – if that were possible – as they were in the final year of their parachute payments after EPL relegation and have also invested heavily in their squad as well as compensating Brentford for taking Dean Smith off them.  If they didn’t make it to the Premier League this time around, there would be question marks about their ability to do so in future seasons, and teams like Leeds, Nottingham Forest, Blackburn and Sheffield Wednesday are a constant reminder of how a once-established top-flight team can languish outside it for a long time (all four having a spell in League One as well).

And so the tension showed on the pitch. It felt like two teams trying to make sure that, first and foremost, they didn’t lose and if they did manage to score it was a bonus. The managers almost said as much with Smith admitting afterwards that he felt that his defensive on-loan, pairing of Tyrone Mings and Axel Tuanzebe could nullify the Derby forwards, while Frank Lampard showed caution with a more defensive formation that had many fans feeling the initiative had been conceded before the whistle blew for kick-off.

Chances were scarce. After half an hour, there hadn’t been one on target and when it arrived, it was from long range and straight into the goalkeeper’s arms. The first – crucial – goal arrived on the break and went in off the scorer’s back. It was that kind of afternoon. The second and clinching goal from man-of-the-match, John McGinn, came after a goalkeeper error and only then did County twist, bringing on three forwards and going for it; almost forcing extra-time with a belated show of intent in the last fifteen minutes after pulling a goal back (even that was deflected in – a day for glorious, clean-cut goals if was not).

But any goal that gets the club £170m is glorious and Villa celebrated like a club that knew it had dropped lucky. In the bottom half of the league in October and with a cabbage rather cruelly thrown at Steve Bruce, they made a change and Smith (a Villa fan) took charge with John Terry as his assistant. That’s what I mean when I say ‘lucky’. I said at the time (in a previous D3D4 article), if they gave him time, he’d do the business (having seen his ability at Walsall to build a playing-style that won matches without necessarily having the best players) but neither they nor me would have expected it to happen so quickly.

But after a run of poor results from December to February, something clicked and they won ten in a row and were catapulted into the play-offs, securing their spot with a game or two to spare. Before Derby in the final game at Wembley, another side from the Midlands were beaten as West Brom failed to keep a full complement of players on the pitch in either leg of the semi-final and lost on penalties.

Now, like Prince William, I’ve got a real soft spot for Villa – I have family and friends who are big supporters – so I’m in no way suggesting that they shouldn’t be back in the Premier League; I’d probably argue they should never have been out of it to begin with.

But this has made me think a bit more about the play-offs themselves. Now, I’d admit they’ve been amazing for football and keep a lot more riding on results until the last kick of the season; Derby only guaranteed their place with two goals in the final twenty minutes against West Brom in that last game, and the beaten team and Leeds both finished well ahead of Derby and Villa in the league.

So the promoted team were seven points off Leeds after a full forty-six games. I know all the old adages; they all knew the rules, it’s the same for everyone blah, blah, blah but those rules, and the play-off format, was decided a long time before a place in the Premier League was worth £170m.

Is there another way I wondered? A way that makes this ‘winner takes it all’ match more palatable and maybe a little fairer? It’s a tough one, but here are two potential ideas: 

The Format

I’ve always loved the play-offs but I am, or at least was, a little biased. My team, Walsall were the first team to be promoted twice from the third tier via this route. As a team who’d never been to Wembley (finally achieved in 2015) we were a little unlucky in that the first time it happened was before the final was played at the National Stadium so we went up after two legs (3-1, 0-2) and a third game decider (4-0) against Bristol City in 1988. This was in the second year of this new concept – when everyone who finished third moaned like hell that ‘they’d have gone up any other year’ – and proved highly popular.

Walsall’s second promotion was in 2001 but typically the footballing Gods had now decided to knock Wembley down and rebuild that season, so it was in Cardiff and not London that promotion was won against Reading (3-2 after extra-time). Both wins came after finishing fourth and I didn’t care a jot. As Jim Royle might have put it – these play-offs were ‘f*****g great!’

It was only in 2016 that I realised they weren’t quite as good as I thought. Walsall (with the squad that Smith built – and managed until November) did finish third, a hundred and thirty-four points ahead of Barnsley in sixth. We’d been in the mix all season, while the little Tykes were that team who finished like a train after being in the bottom four in November. They were delighted to be there, we had to overcome the painful experience of winning our last game at Port Vale 5-0, only to miss out on automatic promotion by a point.

It was then, on the train to Oakwell, that I realised the problem. Barnsley, with a capacity crowd, had a free hit and we were already on our knees. There was no advantage to being third; in fact, an away leg just six days after a crushing blow and against the form team in the division felt more like a punishment and we were blown away, eventually losing 6-1 on aggregate.

It made me think about the format and I’d still like to see a fairer one, where the team who finishes higher gets a clear, distinct and meaningful advantage. The National League have gone that way, giving the higher team home advantage in a one-off game, but after seeing the drama of the semi-finals in all three EFL divisions this season, there won’t be much appetite amongst the neutrals and even I don’t want to see that high drama dissipated in any way. Unless Walsall get there, of course.

The Prize

This one has bugged me all day. What to do that fixes the cliff-edge ‘all or nothing’ climax to the league season that doesn’t ruin the game or the integrity? I don’t know if it would work and there are bound to be things I’ve overlooked but I think there a way to improve the way the prize money is currently distributed.

The first issue with the current method that there no reward for anyone but the winner; the other three teams who might have all won more games and gathered more points are left with a fat zero. The second is that it encourages owners of all clubs to overreach in the hope that it ‘might be them’ who wins the Premier League lottery. That’s a lot of clubs being put in perilous positions and only three possible lucky winners each year.

Finally, as three teams come down, it also creates very cash-rich relegated teams who immediately are installed as favourites for promotion the following year. Too long like that, and we’ll have the same 5-6 clubs bouncing between the top two divisions and no-one else getting a look in.

So what if the money was distributed a little more widely. Instead of £170m per club, what about £160m (or pro-rata if and when a new deal begins)? The other £10m per club is instead put in a play-off fund so that when it’s all over the beaten finalist is compensated with £80m and the losing semi-finalists with £50m each.

That makes the ‘prize’ for reaching the play-offs so much more worth it, and strengthens the Championship more evenly rather than have, say, an Aston Villa who are ‘considerably richer than yow’ or anyone else if they were to come straight back down.

It’s also a massive incentive for clubs to fight for that top six place knowing that it will help them to make the club stronger for a sustained push the following year, rather than one who has to make drastic cut backs to budget and staff because they didn’t make it. After a few years, the money will benefit lots of clubs and make the whole league stronger – so that those that are promoted are even better equipped to make a fist of it in the highest division. And it will reduce the number of clubs basically gambling their very existence on the turn of a card.

It might sound daft – but for those who say that the distribution of money will favour those at the top of the Championship more, the current way already does and much more unevenly. For example, a team like Cardiff City, who go up for one year, will still be a vastly wealthier club than 90% of their rivals the following season. And they get a parachute on top of that.

The Premier League’s strength and world-wide appeal comes from its depth and this can only give the Championship clubs greater capacity for competing at the top level without breaking the bank – or the rules – to do so. That there were two clubs who weren’t at the races this season – even though one spent over £100m – suggests that the gap is getting too wide so the EPL would win from this change too.

I know Wolves will say that they managed perfectly well. And I’d expect Norwich to be thinking that their brand of flowing football can keep them up next season too. I never said it was a perfect idea – but a debate on how to improve things can’t be a bad thing, can it?

I just don’t want to see – in a few years – a play-off final where the stakes are so high for both teams, that neither risk leaving their own half for fear of defeat.

The ‘richest game in the world’ needs to be bigger and better than that, doesn’t it?

words Darren Young, D3D4 columnist