Is there any point to the UEFA Cup or is it just something given to the lesser teams to keep them sweet and stop them from moaning about the Big Four oligopoly?

When Everton qualified for the UEFA Cup the season before last, most fans were bewitched by the idea of European nights at Goodison, and playing a continental smorgasbord of glamorous teams.

What we found when we finally arrived in the promised land of European football was an impossibly long tournament that no one actually cares about, a supernumerary nipple on the otherwise chiseled Champions League Adonis.

'Sending the Cup Winners’ Cup off to the abattoir whilst chopping up the UEFA Cup into an overlong tournament has made them the ugly sisters of the Champions League'


A quick look at Everton's finances reveal that our relatively long UEFA Cup run - playing a total of 10 games - brought in a measly £500,000. Does this prize money make up for the effort that we put in to the tournament? Admittedly, there is a certain amount of controversy over this figure with the club claiming that the UEFA run brought in around £3m. Either way you look at it - half a million or three million - it is a very small amount of money compared to the overflowing trough of moolah that is the Champions League.

It is Europe's Premier Tournament that splits the men from the boys in terms of earnings.

Manchester United have already raked in a minimum of £28m from their European escapades and will have an earnings total of over £30m if they beat Chelsea; even Liverpool's winnings - £18m - dwarf anything that the UEFA Cup can come up with.

The three English teams in UEFA's second-rate European competition, Everton, Tottenham and Bolton all brought in around £500,000 for their UEFA Cup runs even though they all reached the last 16.

A look into these European competitions gives us the main reason as to why there is such a large, and seemingly insurmountable, disparity between the Big Four and the rest domestically.

The fat cats have caught the gravy train and and set up camp in the top Premier League slots, year upon year raking in huge amounts of cash. The gap between fifth and fourth is bigger than any other two positions in the league (even getting relegated gives you two years of generous parachute payments) and again the four top Premier League teams will be able to pull away still further.

European competitions have been butchered by UEFA, and sending the Cup Winners’ Cup off to the abattoir whilst chopping up the UEFA Cup into a messy and overlong tournament has made them the ugly sisters of the Champions League.

Yet again this reflects the huge disparity between the privileged Big Four and the other poor saps sharing a league with them.