Arsenal, Man U, Chelsea, Man City, Liverpool – Trophy celebrating NOT Trophy counting | OneFootball

Newcastle United fans and Crystal Palace fans may not have felt they had very much in common.

However, 2025 has changed all that.

Trophy celebrating NOT Trophy counting.

Wembley on Sunday 16 March 2025 and Saturday 17 May 2025, broadcasting scenes that made countless headlines.

Football fans PROPERLY celebrating winning a trophy.

We have all become so used to something so removed from that.

All of us becoming so accustomed to seeing Trophy counters ‘celebrating’ adding another one to the list.

The ‘success’ of the Premier League is a joke really.

The ‘success’ that is claimed is purely based on how much cash in generated, compared to rival leagues.

When it comes to actual competitiveness within the Premier League, it has been anything but successful.

Of course, the agenda has been crystal clear with the media, led by Sky Sports, wanting to normalise a situation and actively push as many football fans as possible to support just a handful of clubs. Desperate to normalise a situation whereby only a very small number of clubs ever win anything.

Year after year, the money and power advantage ever increasing for this very small number of Premier League clubs.

The media agenda going to such lengths at times, the message at times comes across as ridiculing the rest of football, ridiculing those fans who aren’t supporters of this small handful of clubs.

This all leads to a beyond laughable situation, where so many ‘supporters’ of Trophy counting clubs who have zero interest in ever actually going to a match, are then encouraged to somehow feel superior to all those who follow any other team outside this elite.

20 years and 60 trophies

Ahead of this 2024/25 season, who won the 60 domestic trophies in the previous 20 seasons?

Five clubs won 53 of those 60 trophies.

The seven exceptions were:

2008 Portsmouth won the FA Cup

2008 Spurs won the League Cup

2011 Birmingham won the League Cup

2013 Swansea won the League Cup

2013 Wigan won the FA Cup

2016 Leicester won the Premier League

2021 Leicester won the FA Cup

It is actually worse than I thought…

As in the last 11 years before this current 2024/25 season, Leicester won two trophies and the other 31 were all shared by the usual five – Man U, Liverpool, Man City, Chelsea and Arsenal.

To say this isn’t (WASN’T!) healthy, is the biggest of understatements ever.

The thing is, I don’t think it has even been that healthy for the fanbases of these five clubs that had ended up winning everything. They had lost what it should be all about.

The fans of Liverpool, Man U, Chelsea, Arsenal and Man City becoming beyond entitled.

Football stagnating with Premier League clubs and these fans forgetting what it should mean to see their team win silverware, how they SHOULD celebrate.

No wonder it was seen as incredible how Newcastle United fans celebrated at Wembley (and afterwards) in March, then  now Crystal Palace fans this past week.

This is a world away from so many ‘fans’ of Chelsea, Arsenal, Man U, Liverpool and Man City, sitting at home chalking up another trophy.

A typical situation whereby say in a workplace in and around London especially, ‘fans’ of Chelsea, Arsenal, Man U, Liverpool and Man City all sitting there together arguing about whose team is the best, yet none of them ever actually interested in going to an actual match.

It might be a little bit of a generalisation, but the fact remains that as more and more people are encouraged to ‘support’ a smaller and smaller pool of Premier League teams, it is almost like it is a concerted effort by the broadcasters and others, to try and turn us all into a football public that should pick from only one of a handful of clubs to ‘support’ in the future.

Incidentally, in the previous period of twenty seasons from 1984/85 to 2003/04, in total, 18 different clubs shared the 60 domestic trophies.

Those 18 clubs were Chelsea, Arsenal, Man U, Liverpool, Norwich, Oxford, Luton, Forest, Sheff Wed, Villa, Leicester, Spurs, Blackburn, Middlesbrough, Leeds, Everton, Coventry and Wimbledon.

Whilst obviously I am hoping it becomes more of a regular thing to see Newcastle United fans celebrating winning a trophy, the next best thing will be seeing trophies increasingly shared out amongst other clubs (not Sunderland of course though…), beyond the self-appointed elite.