Fulham’s history making Championship title may mean nothing if the disparity issue isn’t solved

And this season, nothing has defined chaos and a lack of sense more than the Championship. Well, the 2. Bundesliga does come close but there has been no league on this planet that has been the personification of chaotic nonsense like the way the Championship has been. Take Fulham; they’ve lifted the Championship trophy, became the first team to score 100 goals in twenty years, have a sensational Aleksandr Mitrovic who broke the scoring record with 43 goals and have scored five or more goals on seven occasions this season.

Move back a year and all three teams that were relegated at the end of the 2019/20 season were in the top six with Norwich City and Watford finishing in the direct promotion spots. Move back another season and two of the three were in the top six and the trend continues with only serious financial problems affecting the relegated teams from competing again. That trend has been the only consistent thing about the Championship and it all stems from one single thing; Parachute payments.

Crazy notion that, right? But think about it because the Canaries effectively spent each season going up and down, up and down, up and down. In the last ten years, they’ve spent three consecutive seasons in the top tier, three consecutive seasons in the second tier before realising what they had to do and since then, the last four have been them yo-yoing between the two. They’ve been relegated again and all bets should be on them finishing in an automatic promotion spot next season, otherwise why keep Dean Smith at the helm?

And right there is the biggest problem that the recently promoted will have because for all the hoopla of the most expensive final and the biggest prize money in a final, it means nothing. Even with the £100 odd million that Fulham, Bournemouth and the promotion play-off final winner will get is pennies to what a Premier League side will be able to spend and that's even a team who barely survived like Leeds United.

Add that to the fact that all three are getting promoted with what is effectively a Championship level squad filled with only a handful of players capable of thriving at a Premier League level and the double-edged sword starts slicing it's way effortlessly beyond the flesh and through to the bone. All it means is that the cycle will continue, money will keep being earned and that doesn’t seem like all that big a problem, does it?

But let’s put it in context because while the newly relegated sides will earn around £40 million (first season down) and around £30 million (second season down), the clubs in the Championship will get between £7 million and £9 million in Tv money. That figure is why the standard rotation of clubs moving between the two tiers will more or less remain about the same unless someone makes more than a few drastic changes.

The same questions were asked of Leeds United last term but the Peacocks, much like the Bees, banked on their philosophies and managerial talent to keep them up. But what it does is force the other clubs inside the Championship to go well beyond their means in order to try and compete which effectively means pushing themselves to the brink of financial collapse. That is not always the case as Port Vale - proved earlier this week - Luton Town and Huddersfield have shown us but it's the case most of the time.

But sure, that is mostly their fault because surviving in the second-tier mid-table mediocrity might be the highest that a few clubs can aim for, so why try and do anything more? Yet all this is just the problem because as of right now, a solution seems to be nowhere. There have been talks, there have been secret talks, clandestine meetings and all that, yet we’ve got nothing. No changes implemented, nothing attempted and the talks have even, reportedly, dissipated as of right now.

This might continue because as those in the EFL and Premier League continue to have their meetings, the yo-yoing will continue and the Premier League will, more or less, remain the same. Because right now there seems to be no solution at all. Even the League One and League Two’s attempts to introduce a salary cap was scrapped inside six months. These are the same two leagues that contain most of English football’s history, where clubs like Bury went bust, and yet they were so stubborn that it lasted less than six months.

It’s more the kind of loss that they can sweep under the carpet, stand on top of and claim that they were safe. But as Derby County can attest to, nobody is safe. And yet we’ll keep clapping, enjoying it and watching the chaos unfold while eating enough popcorn to feed a country. Because inconsistency has become the hallmark of second tiers across the footballing universe, where anything could happen, where consistency is frowned upon and where an undignified rush to the finale is the only way forward. 

Yet even that’s while we know who’ll probably go up but we’ll willfully suspend our notion of sense just to have fun. All the while around us, the football pyramid collapses, more clubs run their way into financial ruin and history disappears in a flash but the meetings and the secret talks continue while leading to nothing.