Premier League’s spending bubble offers only cheap thrills in winter of disconnect | Jonathan Liew

Like the City of London, the top flight is now an unregulated plaything with little relevance to the real world beyond it

So, how was your January? Perhaps like many people you engaged in a little belt-tightening, foreswore alcohol, began a new fitness regime, creatively restructured a few festive debts. Or perhaps you simply grimaced and shivered your way through a month of rising prices and falling temperatures, waited patiently in the bus queue or on the picket line, simply trying to make it to the next place.

At which point enter the Premier League, with its £815m of January spending, its doctrine of schlock and awe, its unshakeable fixation on persuading men in shirts to wear other shirts before a clock runs out. And on one level the dissonance here is hard to ignore, the temptation to juxtapose Chelsea’s bottomless balance sheet with the efficiencies and strictures being demanded of those who watch them every week. Just imagine how many nurses’ salaries Todd Boehly could have funded with the purchase of one Enzo Fernández. But of course he won’t, will he?

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