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Posted - Aug 19 2005 : 2:19:42 PM
8/6/2005 12:39:00 PM
With the 14th Premiership campaign kicking-off next weekend, Goal.com’s Graham Lister looks back at the history of this internationally popular league…
The landscape and economics of English football changed forever 13 years ago. The Football League, the first of its kind in the world, had been founded in 1888 and served the English game well enough through various expansions and modifications for the next hundred years.
But when the League proudly celebrated its centenary in 1988, there were already rumblings that within four more years would shatter the status quo and usher in a brave new world of the elite and the rest. The Premier League was the vision of the biggest, richest clubs in England, who felt the need to loosen the constitutional ties with their smaller, less glamorous brethren in order to grow a lot bigger and richer and be able to compete on the European stage.
Like a lot of visions, this one came out of the sky. Rupert Murdoch’s Sky, to be exact: BSkyB and the BBC signed a £304 million deal in 1992 that offered three million owners of Sky satellite dishes the chance to watch some 60 live Premiership matches a season if they paid a subscription.
Sky’s money has continued to fuel the financial growth of the Premiership, which has become the world’s most lucrative league, able to pay the sort of wages that can attract and keep world-class stars who might previously have considered moving only to Serie A or La Liga.
But it’s worth remembering how things looked back on August 15th, 1992, when the first Premier League matches kicked off. Denmark had recently won the European Championship in which England, under Graham Taylor, had been woeful. The reigning English champions were Leeds United, who won the last of old-style League Championships in 1991-92 after coming out on top in a tense struggle with Manchester United. The Red Devils, in then just plain mister Alex Ferguson’s fifth season at the Old Trafford helm, were favourites to claim the title until the pressure told with three defeats in the last week of the season. Leeds boss Howard Wilkinson thus became the last English manager to win the English title. In the Premiership era, the successful managers have been Scottish (nine times), French (three times) or Portuguese (once).
Ferguson has been the Scot in charge for a remarkable eight of those successes. It was almost as if the advent of the Premiership liberated Manchester United. They had gone 26 years without winning the title, a span in which arch-rivals Liverpool dominated the scene. The Merseyside Reds had won the League 18 times by 1992; United only seven. Fast forward 13 years and while Liverpool’s tally is still 18, United’s has risen to 15.
In 1992-93, Aston Villa pressed United most of the way but on 2 May 1993, Ferguson was putting on the golf course when a member approached to tell him Oldham Athletic had won at Villa to ensure United were champions for the first time since 1967. The following evening United celebrated in style, beating Blackburn Rovers 3-1 at Old Trafford where joint skippers Bryan Robson and Steve Bruce became the first to be presented with the impressive new Premier League championship trophy.
United’s squad that inaugural Premiership season was Schmeichel, Parker, Irwin, Bruce, Pallister, Ince, McClair, Hughes, Giggs, Sharpe, Cantona (the talismanic Frenchman bought from Leeds in November 1992), Kanchelskis, Robson, Blackmore, Darren Ferguson and Phelan. As well as United and Villa, other founder members of the EPL who have remained ever-present include Liverpool, Spurs, Arsenal, Chelsea and Everton. The first three clubs to be relegated from the top flight were Crystal Palace, Middlesbrough and Nottingham Forest. The others who made up the roster in 1992-93 were Norwich, Blackburn, QPR, Sheffield Wednesday, Manchester City, Wimbledon, Sheffield United, Coventry, Ipswich, Leeds, Southampton and Oldham.
Having waited more than a quarter-of-a-century for a title, Manchester United fans were treated to another straight away as the Red Devils surged to a Premiership-FA Cup double in 1993-94. The one notable addition to their squad from the previous campaign was a certain Roy Keane, signed from Forest, who played in all but five of the League games. United’s closest challengers were Blackburn Rovers.
The Lancashire club had been dramatically revived by local steel magnate and lifelong Rovers fan Jack Walker, who recruited Kenny Dalglish as manager and gave him an enviable transfer budget with which to build a top squad. Dalglish not only spent wisely, notably on strike partnership Alan Shearer from Southampton and Chris Sutton from Norwich; he also blended the many talents into a formidable winning team. Walker got his reward in May 1995 when Rovers became the second Premier League champions. They claimed their first title since 1914 in dramatic fashion, losing their last game (poignantly for Dalglish against his former club Liverpool at Anfield) but being crowned anyway as Manchester United could only draw at West Ham. The two results made Rovers champions by a single point ahead of United, and Dalglish only the third manager to win the English championship with two different clubs. (The other two are Herbert Chapman with Huddersfield and Arsenal; and Brian Clough with Derby and Forest). The triumphant Rovers squad was Flowers, Berg, Le Saux, Hendry, Ripley, Sherwood, Shearer, Sutton, Wilcox, Atkins, Pearce, Warhurst, Slater and Gale.
Since 1992 Kevin Keegan had been reviving Newcastle United’s fortunes, saving them from relegation to the old Third Division in 1992, winning promotion to the Premiership at a canter in 1993, and making them title contenders over the next two seasons. By 1995-96 they looked ready to become champions, leading the table by 12 points at one stage. But the pressure – and Alex Ferguson’s mind games – began to tell as Spring unfolded. Ferguson had dismantled his side and rebuilt it with young home-grown talent, cannily orchestrated by Cantona. Pundit and ex-Liverpool star Alan Hansen famously remarked at the start of the season that “You’ll never win the League with kids,” but United made him eat his words. With gathering momentum they caught up with and overtook Newcastle to claim a third title in four years, then added the FA Cup for good measure. The squad featured the ‘kids’ Beckham, Scholes, Butt, the Neville brothers and of course the veteran 22-year-old Giggs, as well as Schmeichel, Irwin, Pallister, Keane, McClair, Sharpe, Bruce, Andy Cole and Cantona.
The following season, 1996-97, the same United squad plus Solskjaer, Johnsen, Poborsky, May and Cruyff won the title again. With Shearer now in their ranks and managed by Dalglish, Newcastle were again runners-up, but only on goal difference from Arsenal, who had recruited the studious Frenchman, Arsene Wenger, as manager in September. As Wenger got his bearings in England that was the last time the Gunners finished outside the Premiership’s top two.
Indeed, in 1997-98 Wenger’s Arsenal gave United a taste of their own medicine, coming from well behind with an irresistible run of victories – including a 1-0 win at Old Trafford – to clinch the title, then putting icing on the cake by lifting the FA Cup. The Gunners, who’d been champions in 1989 and 1991 under George Graham, were back in business. Their winning squad was Seaman, Dixon, Winterburn, Bould, Adams, Keown, Vieira, Petit, Parlour, Grimandi, Platt, Wright, Bergkamp, Overmars, Anelka, Hughes, Boa Morte, Manninger and Wreh.
The Gunners came within a point of retaining their title in 1998-99, but Manchester United had responded in style, and edged home in a dramatic last week of the season to complete the first leg of their remarkable treble. Ferguson’s squad had by then lost Bruce, Pallister, McClair and Cantona, but been bolstered by the additions of Stam, Sheringham, Yorke, Blomqvist, Berg and Brown.
United finished a massive 18 points ahead of Arsenal in 1999-2000 to claim successive Premiership crowns for the third time – their sixth title in eight campaigns – finishing the season with 11 straight wins. Schmeichel had gone, with Bosnich and Van der Gouw sharing the goalkeeping duties (let’s not dwell on Taibi’s four games, which saw 11 goals conceded, including a 5-0 hammering by Chelsea). Silvestre was the only other significant addition to the squad, though Fortune figured in six games.
In 2000-01, United joined a select club comprising Huddersfield (1924-26), Arsenal (1933-35) and Liverpool (1982-84) by winning a third consecutive top-flight English championship. Arsenal were again their closest rivals, but the winning margin was still 10 points. Barthez was now in goal, while Chadwick, Fortune, Wallwork and Greening were on the fringes.
After finishing second in five major competitions over the preceding three seasons, Arsenal set about putting things right in 2001-02. They didn’t lose an away game and had already won the FA Cup by the time they clinched the title at, of all places, Old Trafford in May 2002. The Gunners finished seven points ahead of Liverpool and 10 clear of United with a squad comprising Seaman, Lauren, Cole, Vieira, Campbell, Parlour, Ljungberg, Wiltord, Henry, Pires, Bergkamp, Keown, Adams, Grimandi, Van Bronckhorst, Luzhny, Richard Wright, Edu, Taylor, Kanu, Upson and Dixon.
Arsenal should have retained their title the following season but a combination of defensive errors and nerves in the run-in saw them squander a commanding lead to the ever hungry Manchester United, who put together another strong finish to snatch their eighth Premiership crown with five more points than the Gunners. Van Nistelrooy, O’Shea, Blanc, Veron, Carroll, Forlan and Ferdinand had been added to the squad by then, while Johnsen, Cole, Stam, Sheringham and Yorke had left the club.
The Gunners, stung by their failure to defend the championship the previous Spring, created history in 2003-04 by going the entire season unbeaten to claim the title with an 11-point margin over runners-up Chelsea, whose fortunes had been dramatically improved by the arrival of billionaire new owner Roman Abramovich at the start of the season. Arsenal’s unbeaten run was eventually halted at Old Trafford in October 2004 at a record 49 games, but in 2003-04 they proved irresistible with a squad from which Seaman, Adams, Grimandi, van Bronckhorst, Luzhny, Wright, Upson and Dixon had gone, but to which Lehmann, Toure, Gilberto Silva, Cygan, Aliadiere, Clichy and Reyes had been added.
With Jose Mourinho installed as manager in place of Claudio Ranieri, Chelsea’s gathering threat became impressive reality in 2004-05, the Blues losing just once as they stormed to their first title in 50 years, setting a host of new Premiership records along the way – including most points (95), most wins (29), and fewest goals conceded (15). The triumphant Chelsea squad was Cech, Johnson, Ferreira, Bridge, Gallas, Terry, Carvalho, Makelele, Tiago, Lampard, Joe Cole, Robben, Duff, Drogba, Gudjohnsen, Kezman, Smertin, Geremi, Jarosik, Parker and Huth.
So now the stage is set for the 14th Premiership campaign, with Chelsea confident of retaining the title, Arsenal and Manchester United determined to recapture it and Liverpool desperate to win it for the first time in the Premiership era. As for the rest, they start with more hope than expectation because the EPL has seen a steady polarisation within its ranks, with the silverware, money and influence concentrated in the hands of a select few. But as a spectacle, the League continues to shine, playing to packed houses and followed around the world via TV. Whether it is technically superior or inferior to Serie A or La Liga is a moot point but it certainly attracts some brilliant footballers and generates a unique excitement and atmosphere. It also boasts the current European champions.
Graham Lister
Footnote:
The full list of clubs who have appeared in the Premiership is as follows:
Arsenal, Aston Villa, Barnsley, Birmingham City, Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Bradford City, Charlton Athletic, Chelsea, Coventry City, Crystal Palace, Derby County, Everton, Fulham, Ipswich Town, Leeds United, Leicester City, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Middlesbrough, Newcastle United, Norwich City, Nottingham Forest, Oldham Athletic, Portsmouth, Queen’s Park Rangers, Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday, Southampton, Sunderland, Swindon Town, Tottenham Hotspur, Watford, West Bromwich Albion, West Ham United, Wimbledon (whose identity has been taken by Milton Keynes Dons) and Wolverhampton Wanderers. Wigan Athletic will therefore become the 39th club to compete in the League when they make their bow next weekend. |
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