You need to include in the general rule that they are consistently qualifying for champs league and sometimes push for the title. It’s more about at the start of the season who has a realistic shot of winning or challenging for the title.

Your definitions would include everyone from the premier league. They spend massively compared to any other league. If you look at France and Germany you say there’s 1 or 2 ‘big clubs’ each. Even some of those qualifying for champs league regularly aren’t big clubs compared to the big six.

West ham, Aston Villa, Brighton, etc etc aren’t ‘big clubs’ in the ‘big 6’ sense as they are still ultimately feeders to those higher.

The point of describing a ‘big 6’ can be looked at with the super league. There’s financial reasons why they - and not others - were invited and discussed it.

Completely agree yeah that this is better than the previous situation. I don’t see it as so much better that they will sustainably challenge for Europe.

The main point I made is that holding on to those talents is incredibly difficult. They will push for a move away, as has happened every time. The reason I bring up Brighton was their example that they know their stars won’t stay for the long-term, just as Villa’s won’t. Or West Ham. Or Brentford (who basically took Brighton’s strats) and other mid-table clubs and also went from lower league to stable Prem. What they do so well is finding the talents to replace them. They brought through Maupay and Watkins (to Villa) and then Toney, selling each for a major profit on their way up the leagues (assuming Toney goes to Arsenal as expected) and have a ready replacement at similar or better level ready with that money. Brighton and Brentford are SO much better than practically everyone else at finding the next player.

Villa, with all due respect, aren’t. Grealish again is a useful barometer here. For his 100m, Villa bought Danny Ings the slightly above overage player), Beundia, Bailey, and Digne. With all due respect, fair to say none of those are top half material right now. And then later Coutinho (again, overage player with no resale value). Maybe Diaby and Torres are different this season. But they’re an investment on top of that.

Would agree Villa are a much better run club than many. Wouldn’t agree that they will sustainably be challenging for the top 6 tho.

Yup. They had a brief stint years ago where they were excellent and had a great squad too. Then crashed and got relegated and rebuilt.

That’s the cycle. A team gets a bunch of quality players, gets into Europe, struggles to juggle with squad depth and has their best players poached. Grealish kept them up, his money afforded a group of decent players. The chairman made some good comments about replacing him in the aggregate. Many of those didn’t work out. But they’re well run compared to others it seems.

That said, still not sustainable. Once the best players demand 2x wages or they move on. Brighton imo may be the only one to break that cycle as they are so good at recruitment. And can afford the squad depth given where they’re recruiting from and how quickly they move the players on. Brighton’s ownership is playing football manager with the editor open.

Who’d have thought that replacing England’s number one at the time at club level would be a bigger story than brighton’s keepers. It’s not as if the same media stories went around with Pickford before… right?

Who’d have thought that the English media would write more stories about the bigger reputation players playing for the national English team…

Calm down your Arsenal victim mentality… they’re not having a pop at Arsenal, it’s obviously bigger news. Just as pickford’s form was before that.

Someone recently watched this on YouTube too, huh? :p