I sometimes think there’s something of a bubble around the Premiership that fans need to poke their heads out of now and again. In fact, that bubble probably envelopes all of English football, but mostly the Premiership.

We obviously all recognise that on a European level, on the pitch at least, the main competition for English clubs comes from Spain and Italy, and to a lesser degree, Germany and France. I may have spoken about this before, but when it comes to competition for the all important consumer Pound, Euro, Dollar, whatever, there’s no question that Premiership clubs are competing with the major Spanish and Italian clubs. Without getting too dragged down with details, I believe that one advantage the Premiership has here is dealing with TV broadcasters collectively, rather than the individual clubs negotiating their own deals as the Spanish and Italians do.

The last time I saw the numbers, the English Premier League was approaching the tipping point where there would be more revenue derived from outside the UK, than inside. As a quick sidebar, it’s for this reason that I have some sympathy with the notion of taking some games overseas. Just to be clear here; not the 39th game idea, that was obviously stupid, but the principle of taking games to some of the places around the world where the money is coming from seems fair enough to me. I should stress the word ‘principle‘ here, the devil is in the detail.

Before I lose you in all this waffle, I should underline that the point I’m trying, and possibly failing badly, to make here is that being part of the 20 clubs in the Premiership is huge. It’s massive. You may well be wondering if I’m going to tell you that water is wet and the sky is blue next, but I think sometimes it really is necessary to step outside of the bubble to truly appreciate just how big the EPL is and how easily taken for granted.

As Villa fans, we obviously all want to see our club continue to improve in search of that elusive Champions League qualification. There’s no shortage of debate about whether aiming to simply finish in the top four is really all that glorious compared with actually winning the league, but there’s no question that the Champions League offers another level of financial reward.

Obviously I desperately want to see Aston Villa be the club to dislodge one of the accepted top four teams, but I’m actually pretty keen to see anyone get in there just to see how the club that misses out handles the loss in revenue. For instance, tonight Liverpool play their last Champions League game this season, a dead rubber, before dropping into the Europa League. They’re also way below par in the Premiership at the moment and if you had to pick one of the four least likely to qualify for next season’s Champions League…. well, I suppose there is a long way to go just yet.

An extension of this theme might be to consider whether you’d rather support a team that avoids some of the bigger risks, but remains safely in the top flight over a side that is less sensible, takes risks, brings in the wrong players and drops down to the Championship. Or, to expand upon that, would you rather win the Championship over finishing bottom half, but safe in the Premiership?

Newcastle probably dropped down a league more through sheer incompetence than simply taking too many risks, although the two are obviously linked. Having gone down though, they’ve managed to regroup very well and will almost certainly be back next season, most likely as champions. How will they fair when they’re back in the top flight? If they get it wrong they could easily join this new group of decent clubs that are too good for the Championship, but not good enough for the Premiership and are forever enduring the yo-yo of promotion and relegation.

But what has prompted this outpouring of loosely linked thoughts is a story I just read at Four Four Two about Serbian club Partizan Belgrade. Nutshell version: Man Utd have apparently just announced that they will not be exercising an option to purchase 18 year old Adem Ljajic because of work permit problems. According to the story, the loss of the mooted £10m transfer fee is a massive financial blow to Partizan and they’ll now be forced to sell “more players than they’d like to in January”.

What a sorry state of affairs. I couldn’t help wondering how life must be supporting a club that has to finance itself by selling its youngsters to the bigger clubs. We’ve all heard the term ‘feeder club’ before I’m sure, but here’s a team who might not be among the most elite of European outfits, but we’re all surely aware of them? Perhaps they’re also victims of their own Newcastle style incompetence, or maybe that’s just the life of the champions of the league ranked 21st in Europe.

If there are any supporters of English clubs below the Premiership reading this and now thinking ‘ah arrogant Villa fan, no clue about life down here in the lower leagues’ then fear not, I haven’t forgotten you. It’s true, Villa have been in the top flight for many years now and are part of an exclusive little club that have taken part in every Premiership season. We may have taken our fair share of youngsters from the lower leagues, especially since MON came to Villa Park, but opportunity remains to plot your own course to the top flight. It may be unfeasibly difficult, but not impossible.

Where do Partizan Belgrade go from where they are though? Sure, they could take their league’s solitary Champions League spot and progress all the way to the latter stages and hope that the three Europa League qualifiers do the same. If the Serbian teams do well enough in Europe over a few seasons they may improve their co-efficient enough to earn an extra Champions League place for the league. But what does that really achieve? Not much.

No. They’re pretty much confined to their small league, discovering, developing and then selling young players like a commodity. Not much of an existence if you ask me. We’re pretty well off as Villa fans really, aren’t we.

The final tenuously linked thought I’ll leave you with follows on from the recent silly nonsense about John Carew going elsewhere in the next window. I mused in that post that this is something to be expected as we threaten the top end of the table. It’s happened before, it will get worse. If the fantastic four start delivering the sort of performances I think they’re capable of, you better believe their names will be linked to every big club under the sun.

So I’ll close out once again with a call to action. Calling all Villa fans to circle the wagons around the club and not to give these baseless stories any credence when they inevitably surface. If you give the garbage churned out by tabloid media more credibility than it deserves it gains traction and can become a self fulfilling prophesy.

So remember the golden rule – No Source? No Quote? No Chance!!