How the tiers of the Premiership work and other sporting crap

Off the bat, congrats to Wales for winning the grand slam. With that out of the way, lets move on to the farce that was Liverpool - Everton.

I'm not going to discuss the referee any further, apart from to say he was a homer (booking Everton players for the slightest touch, ignoring a clear elbow to the face of Carsley, making a token gesture after Baros tried to break Alan "God" Stubbs' leg in an ex-fantasy league player trying to come back to haunt me gesture). Everton were clearly the better team - Liverpool got two lucky goals, due to that retarded "tap the ball two yards to the side so that the wall can be half the distance away when they shoot" free kick routine actually working due to Gerrard's shot sneaking under three separate defenders, and Martyn being caught in two minds for Morientes' speculative effort leaving Luis Garcia to score the easiest goal he'll ever score (although he did try to put it over, only Ljungberg could miss from there).

The whole point of this is that Liverpool are now in with an outside chance of overtaking their city rivals for the last Champions League spot, and coupled with their Reserve Team Cup final appearance and CL quarter final (achieved by a last minute winner against Olymipakos, who Newcastle coincidentally put seven past, and meeting a pisspoor Leverkusen), and ergo their fans will still think they're a "big club". Clue - you ceased to be a big club some time in the early 90's when you stopped being a genuine contender for the title. There's only three big clubs - United, Arsenal and Chelsea. Chelsea only being there as a result of being the latest team to be bankrolled to success (cf. Blackburn, Newcastle for a while, Leeds being the biggest case of self-implosion, at least Blackburn bounced back from relegation). Nobody else is coming within a sniff of a title. The best a non-big club is to hope to get 4th and qualify for the gravy train of the Champions League (we'll leave the aberration of a fourth place finisher making the "Champions" League for another post) a few times and join the big boys.

Liverpool are not a big club. Neither are Newcastle, Aston Villa (to me, they were last any good in the early 80's when they won the European Cup. As did Nottingham Forest, who look destined to either go into the old Third Division, or just escape), Man City, Spurs (who are surely the worst offenders for believing they're a big club - White Hart Lane's a shithole, live with it) or anyone else outside the top 3. They're on precisely the same level as Bolton, Charlton, Middlesbrough etc. who've fought their way up to become regular Premiership contenders, i.e. fighting for UEFA Cup places.

There are precisely three tiers - United, Arsenal, Chelsea, then those who aren't likely to get relegated, then those who can fuck it up (the borderline for the bottom two tiers is miniscule - cf. Southampton). Every team in that bottom tier can join every other team in the pyramid as far as I'm concerned - Birmingham are just as likely to qualify for Europe as Norwich, Wigan or Accrington Stanley. The likes of Liverpool need to stop living on past glories and get a fucking team together.

By the way, isn't it nice to see two grands prix without the name Schumacher featuring on the top of the rostrum? I wouldn't know, as they've buggered off to the third world for the first two and I'm not watching the thrill of pit stops at three in the morning. Even if I had a telly I wouldn't.