Your reading a pre 2010-11 archived article
Rob Curtis returns to Clarkeonenil to explain why more is less.
One thing I’ve noticed over recent years watching Port Vale is how much lower the quality of football below the top division is now than when I started back in 1981. Paradoxically this is despite improvements in players’ diet, training and conditioning. Compared to players like chain smoking defender Colin Tartt and literally barrel chested (he was the size and shape of a barrel) centre forward Bob Newton, today’s Vale players are the epitome of physical size and strength, but the football just isn’t as good.
Thinking in a largely unscientific manner about this, I have a theory about why this might be.
In 1981, Aston Villa won the championship and used just 14 players along the way. This seems an impossible figure now. The top division was 22 teams, so 42 league games rather than 38 now, but cups were then just that – if you lost you were out, none of the 8 game group stages then. As a result there are probably more fixtures now than there were then for most top level teams, but in an era when Wolves can make 10 changes from one game to the next, getting through the whole season with just 14 players seems astonishing. Nonetheless, it seems reasonable to assume that at that point most league clubs were running a squad of about 20 people. Extrapolate that across the leagues, given that at the time although there were big successful clubs and small unsuccessful clubs, the financial gaps between the two were not as monumental as they are now. This would give us an approximate number of professionals across the 92 clubs of 1840.
Making the further assumption that out of those, the best quarter were in the top division, next best quarter in the second division, and so on. Clearly there will be some exceptions with some starting players in Div 2 being better than some reserves in Div 1 etc, but bear with it.
Moving forward to now, taking a sample of listed squad sizes in the Premiership, Man Utd list 43 professionals in their first team squad, albeit there are 10 or so you’ll never have heard of unless you are a rabid Manure fan. Liverpool have an amazing 55, while even Burnley list 35 pros in their first team squad. Moving down the league, Championship Nottingham Forest have 33, League One Leeds 34, and League Two Port Vale 26.
Taking from this a very rough average squad of 40 players at Premiership clubs, 35 at Championship, 30 in League One and 25 in League 2, this still works out as there now being 2960 professional players in the League, with the majority of these being at the top 2 levels. 800 are at Premiership clubs, and 840 in the Championship (4 more teams). 720 are in League One, and 600 in League Two.
In order to account for the influx of foreign players into English football over this period, we are assuming that the proportion of sufficiently talented footballers in the overall world population is basically unchanged (in terms of basic innate skill). Regardless of where they come from, there are still the same number of “good footballers” per head of population as there ever were, the basic population distribution is the same. It’s just that there are now more opportunities to be a professional footballer as squad sizes have increased. (As an aside, following this model there are no more paedophiles as a proportion of the population now than there ever have been – it’s just than in 1981 the Daily Mail hadn’t convinced middle England that there was at least one in every street)
Looking back to 1981, when everyone had a squad of around 20 people. If you were not in the top 20 players at Aston Villa, there was no financial incentive to remain there and just pick up your wages and not play as there is now. For starters the clubs just weren’t funding those additional squad places. Secondly, although there would unquestionably be a gap between what Aston Villa could pay you and what Port Vale could, I’d be very surprised if Villa were offering 150 times as much as could be the case now. If you could get £100 a week playing for Villa, you could probably get £30 a week at Vale. In addition, because there were less players in general and so the gaps between the divisions were not as large, there was the chance of coming through at a lower division club and if you were good enough getting picked up by a top division club having already had some league experience. You might as well go and play, because you will still be a professional footballer, and you will actually be playing. Now, there are currently at least 30 professional footballers at Liverpool FC who are not playing professional first team football at any time, for anyone. Nevertheless the younger members of these unknowns are probably picking up £10k a week for sitting on their arses and cleaning Stevie G’s boots, so why go and play for Vale on £500 a week when you could pretty much set yourself up for life if you could hang on for 3 years on those wages.
So what do all these numbers mean? Less players broadly mean the cream did rise to the top, but also that everyone in the league in 1981 was in the top 1840 footballers employed in England.
Now, the top 1840 players employed in England run out about the playoff line in League One, just over halfway down the full time professional structure. Everyone below that would not have been a professional footballer in 1981. They would have been in non league as part timers, and some of them would have been playing for pub teams and in parks, because actually they are not good enough.
Best 460 footballers at English Clubs (total 460) In 1981 these players were in Old Division One – In 2009 they are the best Premiership players
Next best 460 (total 920) 1981 – Old Division Two – 2009 Premiership reserves, Top Championship Players
Next best 460 (total 1380) 1981 Old Division Three – 2009 Championship Players
Next best 460 (total 1840) 1981 Old Division Four – 2009 Weaker Championship, top of league one
Next best 460 (total 2300) 1981 Tier 5 – 2009 Rest of league one, best players in league 2
Next best 460 (total 2760) 1981 Tier 6 – 2009 Most of league 2
Next best 200 (total 2960) 1981 Tier 7- 2009 Weakest league 2 players
So what this seems to imply is that compared to 1981, less talented players are now playing at a much higher level. There are some people who would have been in Div 4 in 1981 now playing in the Championship, but at least this was still full time pro football. It also seems to show that players who in 1981 would have been playing for Tier 6 or 7 teams, are now at Football league clubs. Having watched Vale recently I can certainly believe that the “true” level of some of our players is teams like FC United of Manchester, Hemel Hempstead United or Bognor Regis Town…….
Food for thought?
