There’s one disastrous statistic that should alarm everybody who thinks they care about English football – and it threatens to endanger our entire game, writes IAN LADYMAN

Here is a statistic that should alarm everybody who thinks they care about English football.

Of the 198 games played by six promoted teams in the Premier League since August 2023, only 23 have been won. Taking this season in isolation, the number is nine from 84.

So those of us who thought last season’s lamentable effort from Sheffield United, Burnley and Luton was a low that was not to be repeated are in the process of being proved disastrously and depressingly wrong.

It threatens to become a fundamental pattern that has already brought great danger to the door of our game.

In Premier League boardrooms, they will profess to care about this but the truth is that they don’t. They will fret about new stadiums and worry about Champions League revenues, never looking far beyond the limit of their own horizons.

The rest of us? Those of us who genuinely value antiquated notions of the pyramid and of promotion and relegation and of sporting fairness should care and indeed worry about this very much indeed.

Ipswich Town have impressed at times but sit 18th, six points from safety with 10 games to go

Last season’s Championship winners Leicester are also heading straight back to the division

Somebody said to me recently that the Premier League has become a 17-team division and they had a point.

The bottom three have been so uncompetitive this season it’s been embarrassing and it was the same last time round. They came up and, rather predictably, went straight back down again.

We used to say it took 40 points to stay up. Last season Luton – in 18th – earned just 26. Ipswich, currently third from bottom with 10 games left, will struggle to beat that this time.

And it’s more than a cosmetic issue. It’s a problem that threatens the integrity and the fabric and the very future of English football.

Remember that half of our Premier League clubs are owned by Americans. Many of them – given the choice – would do away with relegation tomorrow.

A closed shop Premier League would offer them all the financial certainty and security their investment craves. It would make them feel comfortable and at home. And the current state of things plays right into the hands of their argument.

And what of the broadcasters? A relegation fight that goes to the last day is fabulous for Sky Sports and TNT Sports and the long list of foreign rights holders that now plough so much money into the Premier League.

I was at Goodison Park as Everton stayed up on the final day in 2023 and it was a memorable occasion. But what if we continue to live in a world where that kind of drama no longer exists?

Everton staying up on the final day in 2023 was electric – but will it ever happen again?

Ivan Juric’s Southampton already have a sinking feeling and have picked up just nine points

How much longer will TV companies continue to pay up if there is no jeopardy?

At the moment the TV and radio companies are looking at a landscape where there is absolutely nothing for them at the foot of the Premier League. It’s all been decided since Christmas and it was the same last year. That will concern them and – given the immense sums they pay – rightly so.

The broadcasters will view all this in terms of ‘value’ and so will the established Premier League clubs. What ‘value’ – in the very basest meaning of the word – do promoted teams bring to the league? Currently, very little.

Meanwhile consider this. On that day in 2023 when Everton survived, the three teams that didn’t were Leicester, Leeds and Southampton.

Here we are, less than two years on, watching two of them head back down again – having come straight back up – and one of them – Leeds – seemingly set to emerge from the depths once more.

This is the pattern English football’s model of immense financial disparity creates. It shows us that the system is broken.

Parachute payments – dished out to relegated clubs to ease the pain – don’t work. If they did, then the same clubs wouldn’t bounce back and forth between divisions like rubber balls while everybody else sits and watches through the glass.

History shows us that once a club gets a foothold in the Premier League, they can thrive. Brighton, Bournemouth, Brentford and now Nottingham Forest have shown us that and there are cosmetic tweaks we could make to encourage it.

Another friend of mine in football thinks promoted teams should be given a one-year exemption from relegation. No chance of the current top-flight clubs voting for that.

Nottingham Forest have proved this season that it is possible to come up, stay up and thrive

Coaching, structure and recruitment should be rewarded. At places like Brighton and Brentford, in particular, they have been

We could scrap the Championship promotion play-offs which would at least ensure the best three teams from the second tier do actually come up.

If we did that, then the current Championship promotion race would be almost settled already. The division would be poorer without the play-off spectacle, for sure.

The truth is that all of that represents nothing more than some fiddling round the edges when it’s the very fundamentals that remain the problem. Too much money up above. Not enough down below. So the gap grows ever wider. Just like the established Premier League clubs like it to be.

Survival in the Premier League should be about more than money. Coaching, structure and recruitment should be rewarded. At places like Brighton and Brentford, in particular, they have been.

But the truth is that the financial handicap is increasingly prohibitive. What to do about it remains a nuanced conversation. It’s not as simple as giving clubs in the Championship more money as too many of them would just squander it. They’ve shown us that.

Nevertheless this is an inequality that threatens the very structure of our game and – whatever it is they talk about over brandy and cigars in Premier League boardrooms – it’s a subject that should not be ignored.

A stadium for the North? Give it a rest, Sir Jim 

I presume the letter of thanks have started arriving in Monaco already. To the home of Sir Jim Ratcliffe from the good people of the north of England. From Carlisle and Harrogate and Darlington and Rochdale.

Or maybe they haven’t. Maybe, instead, they see Ratcliffe’s plan to build a £2billion stadium ‘for the north’ as the disingenuous and patronising pat on the head kind of garbage that it actually is.

Maybe people see Ratcliffe’s plan to build a £2billion stadium ‘for the north’ as the disingenuous and patronising pat on the head kind of garbage that it actually is

So good luck with your stadium, Jim. Just don’t pretend it’s for us when it’s really for you and the Glazers

Manchester United need a new stadium and if they can get their hands on some Government money to help with the stuff round the edges, it’s entirely their prerogative. Public cash has certainly been spent on worse.

But the north of England is pretty well stocked with big modern sports grounds already. There is another in Manchester and two in Liverpool. There are plans afoot to build a new one in Newcastle and in Leeds. They hold football games and rugby matches and some pretty big pop concerts there, too.

So good luck with your stadium, Jim. Just don’t pretend it’s for us when it’s really for you and the Glazers. The rhetoric around this project is so insulting as to be borderline offensive.

(PS: They tell us we will be able to see the new Old Trafford from the Peak District. Is that supposed to be a good thing?)