- Arsenal v Coventry: watch out for the tackles and the cards
- Arsenal v Coventry 8pm Friday: it seems like only yesterday….
By Tony Attwood
Coventry City (originally known as Singers FC) said farewell to the Premier League in 200/1 having come 19th in the league, while going out of both the FA Cup and League Cup in the fourth round.
They were thus relegated to Football League Division 1, which later changed its name to the Championship. Although they did get to 8th position in that league in 2005/6, they mostly seemed more likely to end up somewhere between 11th and 21st, while going out of both the League Cup and the FA Cup in the early stages of those competitions.
Indeed, by 2012 things had got so bad that they were relegated again, this time down to League One. But even that was not low enough for the new Coventry, for in 2016/17 they finished 23rd in the Football League Division 1 (the third tier) and so moved down to the bottom rung of the Football League (EFL 2 to give it the full name at the time.)
But this, it seems, was a step too far, for in 2017/18 the recovery programme began, and after one season in the bottom tier of the Football League they gained promotion, and after two seasons in the third tier, they were on the way up again; returning to the Championship in 2020/21.
And there they remained until, at the end of last season, they gained promotion back to the Premier League, and the reward of having their opening match on TV, away to Arsenal. During this time they have had one Cup triumph, reaching the semi-finals of the FA Cup in 2024.
According to TransferMarkt website (to which we often refer, as you may have noticed) Arsenal now have a 25-man squad of 29 players – this remarkable fact being achieved by having four under-21s now listed in the first team.
Our four under age players (which allows the registrations of 29 players to be accepted) are Max Dowman, who has reached the mighty age of 16 and is given a valuation of 30 million euros, Ethan Nwaneri, who is 19 and worth 35 million euros, Myles Lewis Skelly, also 19 and at 35 million euros, and Tommy Setford at half a million euros.
The total value of the squad is now put at €1.41bn by TransferMarkt, and when we look at the league as a whole, makes it the most valuable football league in the world.
Now there is, of course, a point here, and that is that with the top clubs having players of such a value, it gets harder and harder each year for clubs that are promoted from the Championship to find any way of survival. They will of course seek to bolster their squads by buying in a few stalwarts who have played in the league before, but by and large, unless the promoted clubs are willing to risk all their finances on staying up, they will struggle.
Indeed, setting aside the great amusement some of us had at the fate of Tottenham Hots last season, the fact is that Tottenham’s team was the sixth most valuable team in the Premier League, and yet they still struggled with relegation issues until the last matches.
Half of the clubs in the league have a registered squad that is larger than Arsenal’s (Chelsea, with their bizarre buying and selling model, have 40 players listed!) (of whom 29 are listed as non-UK citizens!), but even so they don’t have the most valuable squad in the league. That honour falls to Arsenal with their 29 squad members valued at £1.49 billion. Hull City at the other end of the scale, have a squad valued at £144m.
So as we can see there is quite a variation in the clubs this coming season, and I think it is fair to say we can divide the clubs into four groups
1: Looking seriously at a top five finish, for a place in the Champions League
2: Looking for a place in the Europa League or the Conference League
3: Looking to stay comfortably in the Premier League and not having a fight with relegation
4: Fearing relegation
The fact is that the three clubs that came up at the end of last season, which of course includes our opponents in the opening game, are in this final group, and although one of the survivors from last season might be dragged down, it is common these days for at least two of the promoted clubs to go down.
In fact, although exact positions can’t be predicted from the start of the season, most of us can take a fair guess at who is going to end up where – and that surely isn’t very good for the competitiveness of the league.
