Inferiority Complex

Between 1988 and 1991, the distinctive three stripes of Adidas set Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool apart from the rest of the football league. So to, mind you, did the quality of the footballers at their disposal.

Liverpool and Arsenal spent much of the era swapping the baton of the Barclay’s First Division title. Whilst United, still a couple of years away from a brave new world of Premiership dominance, began flexing their muscles with significant achievements in domestic and European cup competitions.

Twenty Premiership seasons have since past and in that time those three clubs have won (at the time of writing) 34 out of 59 domestic competitions. Close to 60% of all the shiny silverware this country has to offer to its football elite has been shared between them. Heaven knows how large that number might have been had Chelsea not emerged as the force they have become.

Unsurprisingly, the three clubs were influential in persuading England’s premier clubs to become just that. By the early nineties, they, alongside Everton and Tottenham Hotspur had long been viewed as the “Big Five”. Sadly, for the latter two, the Premiership would not prove the Promised Land for which they had yearned.

Nowadays, the Reds of Manchester, London and Merseyside have more than their kit manufacturers in common: they are globally perceived as England’s biggest three clubs; the record books confirm they are England’s three most successful clubs; and they are, according to Deloitte and with the exception of Abramovich-backed Chelsea, the three biggest revenue generators in English football.

All pretty depressing stuff of course if you happen to support one of the three clubs’ fierce city rivals. Enter those former bastionsof the big five, Everton and Tottenham Hotspur and, the new kids on the block, Manchester City. In the same time frame it has taken their adversaries to rattle up 34 titles, the names of their underachieving cousins have troubled silverware engravers just 4 times: Whilst there is still a sense that Manchester City are experiencing something of a calm before an inevitable silverware storm, they have, at the time of writing, only won one FA Cup since 1992; eighteen years have past since Everton picked up a pot; whilst Tottenham have won just two League Cups since the Premiership was born.

The hard facts, often presented in the form of pennies and pounds, inform us that the bridesmaids have simply never been pretty enough. All three have either flirted with relegation or actually been relegated during the Premiership years. Nowadays, Manchester City, the team who sunk to the lowest position of all three during that time, look capable of flying higher than anybody else. They may not have the trophy laden history of Everton and Spurs, but they have something more relevant to future success: lovely lucre.

Perhaps kits hold the key after all? Red is of course often offered as a reason for success. Attrell, Gresty, Hill and Barton’s 2008 Journal of Sports Science article entitled ‘Red shirt colour is associated with long-term team success in English football’ argues exactly what it says on the tin and points to another reason, other than the genius of Brian Clough, why Nottingham Forest have won two European Cups. Red, a colour of passion and danger, signals nothing but pain and anger for the supporters of Everton, Spurs and Manchester City.

In spite of all of this, the 2011/12 season has offered genuine hope for all three of the underachievers. The fact that two of the three are likely to end the season empty handed and below their respective rivals yet again is something their long suffering fans will find tough to tolerate.

During the middle part of the season, Tottenham’s form and brand of football was so impressive, many viewed them, not United, as being City’s main rivals for the title. Sadly for the Cockerels, they have long since been forgotten as title contenders, they suffered the ignominy of heavy defeat to their second most hated rivals at Wembley and they are now in real danger of missing out on Champions’ League qualification altogether. Most pertinently, they find themselves below You Know Who in the league table.

Everton, the worst equipped financially to deal with the chasm that has developed between them and their respective neighbours, once again left it late to come good. Whilst their now traditional Spring surge led all the way to Wembley, they froze when it mattered most and were beaten by what many judge to be a less than vintage version of Merseyside red.  

When the Blue Moon eclipses United on Sunday afternoon, Tottenham and Everton fans will look on more contemplatively than most; for whilst clinching the Premiership is the dream of all football fans, it is the long suffering supporters of those lesser two lights who long more than any others to match City’s accomplishment of defeating their own inferiority complex.