The 6 factors that determine how enthusiastic the press will be to a PL champ

Yes, this is a list.

Photo by Fabricio Trujillo from Pexels

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With Manchester City having bulldozed their way to yet another Premier League triumph, there have been a few op-eds published on why this represents the next evolutionary step toward a permanently unequal Premier League, where the bottom five teams are forced into debtors prison while the rich feast in their mansions on the clouds.

This strikes me as slightly premature, not least because Leicester City fluked their way to a title win a mere three years ago! Yes, this was an outlier event like no other, but it seems a little rash this season to talk about the ‘inevitable’ petroleum-funded victory of a team that won the league by a single point.

What is far more predictable in my opinion is how the media will react to Premier League champions each season. So predictable, in fact, I’m wagering you could come up with a set of objective criteria to roughly gauge the general enthusiasm of the press to a given champion.

And so that’s exactly what I’m going to do today.

In a perfect world, I would also come up with a mathematical equation to reflect how these factors interact, but that isn’t my strong suit. If any of you would like to chime in on a good way to express these factors in a handy equation, please drop me a line.

So, here are the factors that go into how media will respond to a Premier League title winner, in no particular order:

1. Time since last title win

Back-to-back titles are inherently boring; this season, every big five league champion retained their title, which was widely cited as a bad thing because variety is the spice of life. Though Liverpool have the second highest number of first division titles and have a relatively high wage bill, their last league win came nearly thirty years ago.

2. Total number of titles

Generally, the more titles you’ve won historically, the less enthusiastic the media will be about your league win. At the same time, historical dominance rarely translates into negative coverage. Dominance is often prized for its own sake, but from a narrative perspective, a historically good team winning a title lacks a dramatic edge.

3. Time spent in first/margin of points b/t second place

The more a team chases the title throughout the season, and the slimmer the points lead, the better the perception of the victory. Hence, Aguero’s dramatic final day winner in 2012, matched with Man City’s historic drought up until that point, combined for a one-two punch of positive coverage despite the wage bill and owner resources. This factor also covers dominance; a team that cruises in first is likely knocking the crap out of their opponents on a weekly basis, which tends to detract from the drama of the inevitable title win.

4. Relative wage bill

Though it’s largely taken for granted that the wage bill is an inevitable price of winning, winning a title while spending less than your opponents always translates into positive coverage.

5. Owner resources/industry/nationality

It’s not just the relative wealth of the owner that matters in how the title-winners will be covered, but their political connections and the perception of their industry. For example, though Man City’s Sheikh Mansour’s net worth (~$17 billion) is only about $5 billion higher than Roman Abramovich’s, the former is a member of a powerful royal family worth roughly $1 trillion, whereas Roman merely has some powerful Russian friends. Meanwhile, it’s far better for your club’s owner to earn their wealth from something relatively benign such as travel retail, rather than petroleum. And if you can avoid having American owners, that helps too.

6. Affability of manager

Smiling a lot in interviews, being relatively gracious in defeat (or in victory), and a lack of temper play a major role in determining how your title win will be perceived in the media. And though a certain measure of prickliness is welcome (see Sir Alex Ferguson), it is usually tolerated with a fairly repeatable record of success.

This list is open for debate; I didn’t, for example, include the influence of other competitions; sometimes a domestic title win is enhanced by the prospect of a club winning the Champions League, or the FA Cup (though not this year).

And see how these factors work in practice this season: City’s relative lack of titles was counterbalanced by Pep Guardiola’s somewhat combative nature of late, the club’s sizeable wage bill, their owners, and the fact they have been in first place (or second with a game in hand) for some time leading up to the title game, and the fact they are retaining the title. This might go a long way to explaining the media’s lukewarm reaction to the win.

And when you have a club such as Leicester City, who had never won the title before 2016, who were only a few points ahead in first for much of the latter half of the season, who had a relatively puny wage bill, with an affable Thai owner who was a devoted Buddhist and made his money through duty free shops, and an Italian manager who seemed incredibly humbled by the occasion—it becomes an international fairy tale!

This post is obviously something of a joke, but understanding how the media is likely to interpret your on-field success presents a good way to gauge how your club is perceived beyond your fanbase. This is not to say clubs have a lot of control, here. City might have benefited more from a more affable Pep, but most of the other factors are outside their influence.

The point rather is for clubs to learn to ignore this noise. Every year a title win must mean something. When Leicester won, it meant dreams do come true. And City’s win this year, particularly with the yawning points gap between the top two and the rest of the league, means that things are becoming more unequal (they are, but this title win isn’t the proof, nor is it even the best example).

Lack of competitive parity is a worthy topic, but it must be addressed in a wider context, not as a lazy way to bash an unlikeable champion.