ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE RELEGATION BATTLE:The price of relegation gets higher every year as two more clubs will discover tomorrow, writes DAVID LACEY

IT IS mopping-up time in the Premier League. Time to dry away the tears of disappointment while indulging those shed in sheer relief. Relegation used to be an inconvenience. Now it is a financial disaster that can threaten a club’s existence or at least raise the spectre of administration.

Five teams will be struggling for survival tomorrow but the life raft can take only three. Blackpool and Wigan Athletic, lying 18th and 19th respectively, must be favourites to go down with West Ham United but Blackburn Rovers, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Birmingham City know that one mistake, by a player or referee, may cost them dear.

Every season the price of relegation gets higher. Parachute payments of €55 million over four years may ease the burden of going down, but they hardly compensate for the loss of up to €46 million a season that membership of the Premier League promises. In any case some clubs have already mortgaged future income in a desperate bid to stay up.

This week Steve Morgan, the chairman of Wolves, savaged the reckless spending and borrowing that saw the Premier League clubs lose half a billion pounds last year despite record receipts. He was speaking from a position of strength, given Molineux’s sane business approach, but his criticisms will doubtless go unheeded.

The English leagues are not leagues in the mutual sense but a collection of fiefdoms, each one jealous of its preserves. The plutocratic nature of the Premier League means that at least two-thirds of its members enter a season thinking not so much about what they could win as what they may lose.

There are in effect two relegation struggles, one to stay out of the bottom three and avoid dropping into the Championship and the other to stay in the top four and ensure a continued interest in the Champions League. In each case fear of forfeiting millions is the motivating factor.

Even now, losing Premier League status need not be a mortal financial blow. From what Morgan says, Wolves would survive the drop better than most. Similarly West Bromwich Albion have more than once bounced back without bouncing cheques. Clearly the Black Country knows better than many how to stay in the black.

Yet no amount of fiscal nous will save clubs with a death wish. Blackburn plunged into the relegation struggle after their new owners sacked Sam Allardyce, a manager likely to keep them up, while West Ham United’s demise appeared inevitable once they decided to retain Avram Grant, one likely to take them down.

The most urgent problem for a relegated club is holding on to enough of their better players to stand a good chance of a quick return. A team used to be able to retain what was good and dispense with some of the lesser talents, but with Premier League wages ludicrously inflated by whichever club happens to attract the eye of a passing sheikh or oligarch, the pressure to let the high earners go is enormous. And players want to stay where the big money is anyway.

Sixteen players left Upton Park the last time West Ham were relegated, in 2003, and Scott Parker is expected to lead a similar exodus now as the club strive to reduce their debts. Blackpool, whether or not they go down, are still set to lose the inspirational Charlie Adam and others may follow, which would be the result of a sensible wages policy.

The underlying fear of those relegated tomorrow will be finding themselves still stuck in the Championship after the parachute payments run dry. It is all too easy to tumble through the divisions like a man falling down several flights of stairs.

Bradford City, promoted to the Premier League in 1999 and relegated in 2001, have just finished in the lower half of League Two, which used to be called the Fourth Division. Next season the Sheffields, Wednesday and United, will be meeting in the old Third.

The return of Queens Park Rangers and Norwich City to the Premier League is to be welcomed given the good footballing traditions of both clubs, and QPR appear to have the financial clout to make a go of it. But even Loftus Road will start thinking more about getting 40 points rather than setting England and Europe on fire, as they did in the mid-’70s.

On second thoughts, better make that 42.

Guardian Service