Mind The Gap? You’ll Not See The Other Side For Too Much Longer

Thirty-five years ago, on a clear, chilly night in the North West (but in early February rather than January) a team in the top half of the third tier of English football travelled up the M6 to play one of the country’s (and Europe’s) elite in the first leg of the League Cup semi-final.

31, 073 fans were there, in a stadium that can hold quite a few more than that. Sound familiar? The similarity ends right there.

I can talk in a fairly qualified way about the occasion in 1984. I was one of those at the game. Walsall, there or thereabouts in the Division 3 (League One) promotion race, had beaten Blackpool, Barnsley, Shrewsbury, Arsenal and Rotherham to somehow get to the last four of a major competition for the first and only time in our history.

They drew Liverpool, at that time the reigning champions of English football (it was about to get even better) and who were enjoying another incredible season as they swept almost all before them on their way to another title as part of a treble-trophy winning season. In fact, at Anfield, they only lost two games all season (to bottom club, Wolves, incredibly, and Sunderland – my colleague Mark would never forgive me if I’d left that out).

In fact, it was Sunderland who had been Liverpool’s warm-up act for the semi-final, battling out a goalless draw with them at Roker Park on the Saturday while Walsall were edging to victory at Port Vale. But no-one gave them much of a chance at Anfield.

Now, if you are under the age of forty, some of this might now mean too much but the home team that night for the semi-final was:

Grobbellaar; Neal, Kennedy, Nicol, Hansen, Gillespie; Lee, Whelan, Johnston; Robinson, Rush

Kenny Dalglish, Graham Souness and Mark Lawrenson were missing with injury although the latter two were fit again for the second-leg a week later.

I couldn’t get a ticket for the Walsall end of the ground that night, so along with many others, we got home tickets instead and occupied a little corner of what is now the stand named after King Kenny, right next to The Kop. On the grainy footage of the early stages of the first half, you can just about see our Union Jack flag emblazoned with WFC, draped over the advertising boards, until the police made us take it down.

The game lives long in the memory, even three and half decades later, for reasons that will become obvious. Ronnie Whelan gave Liverpool an early lead (13 mins) but Walsall stayed with them, refusing to be overwhelmed despite the obvious gulf in quality. Just before half-time, an on-debut Gary Gillespie cleared the ball off the line only for it to hit full-back Phil Neal on the back and bounce in for an own-goal equaliser. Whelan scored his second on 73 minutes to seemingly end the Saddler’s brave resistance, but a minute later, substitute Kevin Summerfield lobbed Grobbelaar to make it 2-2 and leave the tie nicely poised.

Never once did we ever look like losing heavily; and definitely not nine-nil.

That’s nothing against Burton Albion, who did just that on Wednesday night in their first leg tie at Manchester City. Again, home tickets didn’t sell out (a scarily close 32,089 were in attendance). Numerous incidents on the motorway delayed most of the 34 travelling coaches from Burton, plus many cars, with some arriving well after kick-off. But it was one of those nights when arriving ninety minutes after kick-off – or not getting the Etihad Stadium at all, as some didn’t – wouldn’t have been the worst thing to happen.

City were several classes apart. They scored on five minutes and after that, it was one-way traffic (no pun intended) and Burton were lucky to avoid bringing a double-digit deficit back to Pirelli Stadium for the second-leg. The home side made some changes to the team that had only managed to score a mere seven against Rotherham at the weekend in the FA Cup. Perhaps Pep felt they needed more of a cutting edge. Nigel Clough wasn’t embarrassed post-match – he’d feared an even bigger defeat.

Now if you’re reading this and Burton have turned it around at home and gone through, I take the rest of this article back, but as it stands that is hugely doubtful although some good news for them; if they win 10-1, it will go straight to penalties this season rather than them being eliminated on away goals. Who says rule changes aren’t good for football?

As for Walsall’s very much alive second-leg back in ‘84, they had plenty of chances to score but a canny Liverpool squeaked through with goals from their all-time leading goal scorer, Ian Rush and that man, Whelan again.

Walsall fans, I assume tongue-very-much-in-cheek, thought they were that ninety minutes from a place in Europe (I presume the thinking was that if they had won, they’d have qualified for the UEFA Cup even if they’d lost the final to Everton as the Toffees won the FA Cup and therefore went into the Cup-Winners-Cup). The club’s fanzine was called NMFE as a result but it wasn’t the case, despite what Wikipedia says. We wouldn’t have been in Europe unless we’d won the thing. The League Cup runners up didn’t get the European spot like they did in the FA Cup. And Liverpool went on to win the League Cup in a replay anyway. That also marked the end of a weird little spell where the League Cup final losers found solace by going on to win the FA Cup. It happened with Spurs in 1982, Manchester United in 1983 and Everton in 1984 until Sunderland buggered the sequence up the following season.

But I digress. What I wanted to point out, during this nostalgic trip down memory lane, was that the nine-goal crushing of Burton is further evidence of the gap – approaching Grand Canyon-esque proportions – between the Premier League and the rest. In 1984, when Walsall held Liverpool in the first leg, the hosts were arguably the best team in the world at the time. Manchester City aren’t even (going by the league table at least) currently the best team in the North West of England.

But whereas Walsall were never out of that game, Burton were almost never in it from the moment Lucas Akins scuffed a shot on target after 12 seconds. This wasn’t a team of mugs either – they’d knocked out Burnley, Villa, Forest and Middlesbrough to get that far but that further highlights the chasm.

I’m not saying big scores didn’t happen thirty-odd years ago. City’s win was the biggest in the competition since Liverpool beat Fulham 10-0 in 1986 (although, bizarrely, before they played Walsall two years earlier, it had taken three games to get past the Cottagers and then by a single goal).

But there were closer games and more genuine shocks. These days, when a Premier League team is knocked out by lower opposition, it’s not of the giant-killing magnitude of the past; they’ve always made several changes and even in some cases cobbled an XI together who haven’t played as a unit before. And usually the team that loses doesn’t give a toss (their fans do, mind) as they want to focus on staying in the league or getting into the top four.

The likes of York and Wrexham beating Arsenal, third-tier Bournemouth toppling Man Utd and non-league Sutton knocking out Coventry City (the FA Cup winners 18 months previously) were achieved against the strongest sides available, not players regaining fitness or from the under-23 squad.

The gap is getting bigger and bigger, and quickly too. It was only six years ago that League Two Bradford went all the way to the League Cup final, beating Arsenal and Villa on the way. Would they do that now?

Look at the winners since 2013. Only the two Manchester clubs and Chelsea have achieved it and this year’s final will feature at least one of those three again, or else Spurs. Like Leicester’s unlikely title win it was the exception that proves the rule and prompts the big clubs to spend more and grow stronger squads to make sure it never happens again.

But it’s not this season I’m worried about or the next few. Will the smaller clubs – or even EFL clubs full stop – eventually be out of the equation completely if we carry on as we are? Fast forward 10-20 years and the likes of Walsall and Burton won’t get anywhere near a major cup semi-final, let alone come within ten goals of getting through it. That’s my real concern.

Peter Scudamore has done a great job for the EPL and the clubs, but I wonder, in the long term, if we’ll look back and say that the huge influx of money – and the skewed distribution of it – was the worst thing that could have happened to English football?

It’s not just the domestic game though. Across Europe, money is driving a larger wedge between the haves and have nots of the major – and not so major – leagues.

Back in 1984, after getting past Walsall, Liverpool reached another semi-final after a 4-1 demolition of Benfica at the Stadium of Light in the European Cup. The other quarter finalists that season were AS Roma, Dynamo Berlin, Dynamo Bucharest, Dinamo Minsk, Rapid Vienna and Dundee United. How many of those teams, or the countries they represent, will get to the last-eight of the Champions League again?

I’m not saying it’s not a better competition, certainly quality-wise, but that – for mainly financial reasons – the ‘Champions’ League is a misnomer, about keeping the big boys from taking their ball home and that now has teams in it that haven’t won their own domestic championship for more than half a century whilst some of the teams in the above list will be lucky to ever qualify for the group stage again.

The wealthiest clubs – everywhere but especially in England because of the sums of money involved – will keep getting bigger. The poorer clubs will get smaller, even if just by comparison. The gap will continue to grow. How big will it get? Who can tell for sure, but my guess is that it won’t end well – not for the future generations anyway.

In 1984, the season ended with Liverpool crowned as champions of Europe after they beat AS Roma on penalties in Rome. Nine of the team that night also started in at least one of the League Cup semi-final legs.

Walsall never quite recovered from the disappointment and their league form tailed off, losing ten games after the second leg defeat, and fading out of the promotion race completely before settling down for another four years of third tier football.

The more things seem to change, the more they stay the same.

words Darren Young, D3D4 columnist