Why Premier League Football is Dead To Me.

Strangers often ask me who which football team I support. Not strangers in the street (although that does happen from time to time when I’m bedecked in a Hendon shirt), but people I get talking to through work, friends of friends and the like. When I reply that I’m a Hendon fan, I can guarantee they will look momentarily puzzled, chuckle and then ask ‘but who’s your Premier League side?’ to which I reply ‘I couldn’t give a Nun’s fart about the Premier League, Champions League or England.’ At this point, they usually make their excuses and head for the bar whilst muttering under their breath. On occasion though, they might pull up a pew (or chair if we’re not in a chapel) and find out why.

I used to enjoy watching the top flight, back in the days when football didn’t exist pre-1992 and ITV used to show The Big Match. There was something enormously heart-warming about the sight of Elton Welsby, the warm tones of Brian Moore and the promise of another thumping left footer from Ian Woan at the City Ground. Even in the early days of football’s existence, I would watch Match of the Day and Sportsnight for the highlights. Dalian Atkinson, Mark Robins, Andy Ritchie, who would have ever thought such names would belong to such a halcyon age?

Andy Ritchie and Des Walker. Back when football was football, and shorts were short.

As time went on, money flooded into the Premier League and I became more and more engrossed with goings on in and around Claremont Road, my affair with top flight football began to whither. I’ll confess to feeling pretty good when Manchester United completed their treble with their last-gasp HendonvTonbridge-esque mugging of Bayern Munich in the Camp Nou a dozen and a half years ago, but even in that time, the top echelons have changed beyond recognition.

As soon as the Premier League was born, it was obvious that the game at the highest level in England was going to hell in a dustcart sooner or later. Whilst Euro 96 no doubt helped the popularity of the game at home, it was the money, marketing and coverage afforded by Sky Sports that really shifted the game into a new stratosphere. No longer were matches played on bare mud patches, no longer did players come out after half time still drenched and caked in mud, no longer were clubs described as clubs or teams, instead football became ever more mired in its own importance. Talk of ‘brands’ emerged. How to market the ‘brand’ that Manchester United became abroad, in the US and Far East for example. Then Richard Scuadamore removed his head from his rear end for long enough to talk of exporting the ‘Premier League’ brand as if it were tea. The 39^th game, giving absolutely no thought at all to the poor inhabitants of Daegu or Shanghai who would be forced to sit through Alex McLeish’s Birmingham against Big Sam’s Blackburn, was bandied about as if it was the answer to all the world’s ills. Move over Big Society, the 39^th game is here. Need to re-generate the world economy? What better way than the 39^th game.

Then we have Phil Gartside’s self serving and ludicrous idea for a two-tier closed shop Premier League on the clear, (but never admitted) basis that relegation would completely kill off Bolton Wanderers and that he didn’t quite have the means to guarantee that a drop in level would never happen. Mr. Scudamore continues to claim that the Premier League and their constituent clubs is in rude health despite continuing evidence to the contrary at the majority of clubs. Is the Chelsea or Man City way of basing everything on the money, loans and goodwill of one wealthy man really a healthy business model motored towards swiftly become sustainable? Are leveraged buy-outs that saddle clubs with enormous turnovers with debts that would make even the most speculative of bankers eyes bleed and come out in a hot flush of embarrassment the way to be going? Was the case of Portsmouth, not only spending money they didn’t have but money that in fact didn’t actually exist not enough of a warning sign? Apparently not.

You see the latest nugget of genius to come from a Premier League boardroom clearly comes in the wake of the European Court of Justice’s landmark ruling in favour of Portsmouth landlady Karen Murphy last week. Ian Ayre, currently Managing Director of Liverpool has today been reported as threatening to break away from the current TV rights deal where every club gets an equal share of foreign rights in favour of being able to negotiate their own rights a la Barcelona and Real Madrid in Spain. Even the most fleeting of glances at the La Liga table tells you what a reprehensibly and ill conceived notion that is. Thankfully, I haven’t yet seen one comment in favour of such a move anywhere, supporters groups have been reassuringly against such a move and  as any proposal would require agreement from 14 Premier League brands then unless chairmen and owners genuinely are stupider than they appear then it’ll never happen, even Phil Gartside might think twice before saying ‘Aye’. What Ayre’s comments may do however is move the richer clubs closer to a European Super (not my words) League.

And to be honest, that would be a move I could get right behind. Let the clubs who would rather put money over competition disappear into an ‘elite’ tournament amongst themselves that with any luck, will be live and very exclusive on pay TV, covered widely in the printed press and as such, completely and utterly off my radar screen and leave those of us who favour at the very least, maintaining the status quo to try and fall back in love with the game we did all those years ago for the reasons we did. Friends and colleagues scoff when I look at them blankly as they talk about PSV v Arsenal in the Champions League and explain that instead, I was at a league cup tie at Barton Rovers. They just don’t get it. Few people do.

UGH!

By and large, at Non League level football is still primarily a sport. Yes, money helps but the antipathy towards clubs (yes, they’re still clubs at this level despite a certain Surrey based best efforts) that gain promotions and such like on the back of one man’s money without putting in place contingency plans is in a way, quite refreshing. However, occasionally things creep in that I don’t like. Yellow footballs in winter (don't get me started on the red ones), clubs toying with squad numbers, pre-match handshake piffery. I could just about let Lewes’ electronic substitutes board though, that was quite nice. In short, 98% of what you witness on a Saturday afternoon or Tuesday night is football in maybe not quite its purist form, but not far away. By and large the players are there because they want to be there in front of 35 people on a freezing cold January night going into extra time. Because they enjoy it and for that very reason, I enjoy watching them, supporting them and willing them on and in turn, when you speak to them after the game in the bar they appreciate you making the effort to come out and watch them. That’s not to say you don’t get the occasional prima donna (take a bow Jermaine Hunter), but for the vast majority it’s not about an extra digit on their weekly salary. It’s not about the new contract, the new boot deal. It’s about the love of the game. And that’s the game that I love.