The Premiership - Dull or what?

[Man of Harveys]

As dull as you think it is, its worse in the other main european leagues.

Like where, out of interest? In France, Lyon have certainly dominated recently but I think that's a new thing since Houllier went there, while in Spain of course you have the big two but they're very far from guaranteed winning the league, as Valencia and Deportive La Corunna have shown very recently.

As for Germany, the lead has recently been changing hands frequently and the Man U-equivalent is struggling, to universal delight outside Bavaria, while the sort-of Everton-equivalent Hamburg - who uniquely, have been in the Bundesliga since it was founded - are currently second from bottom and have only won one game. But...they're still getting 50,000+ every week, so maybe this competitiveness (and much cheaper tickets) is what makes the Bundesliga the best supported league in Europe.

So where are these other European leagues that are less predictable than "it's between Chelsea or Man U this year"? Italy. maybe? I don't know, I'm genuinely curious.

 

[Pavilionaire]

Good points MoH.

The only more predictable league I can think of is the SPL in Scotland.

Even though there is a Big 4 in this country Liverpool are NEVER going to seriously contend, while Arsenal lack the financial clout to spend the sort of money to bring a Rooney, Rio, Shevchenko or Ballack to the club.

 

[Fran Hagarty]

I watch them on TV when there's nothing else better to watch, but I totally agree with what you've said. I'm bored with the same teams being at the top, with the media coverage, with their many armchair gloryseeking, non local fans and, basically what has happened to the lesser clubs since they dominated the league to such an extent. Quite frankly, I prefer to watch other teams and the Cup Finals are becoming a bore with the monotonous regularity of featuring at least one of them.

It was interesting to hear the commentator, during a recent Chelsea match, that those Chelsea "supporters" who say they have always supported them were missing when the Premiership was introduced as they had a crowd of only 13,000 on the first match! Their recent success has obviously attracted many of the glory seekers!

The Premiership has sadly, since its introduction, widened the gap between the top few and the rest, and don't talk to me about the financial side of it. It is not an even playing field and I can't see how this will change. To my mind, it's ruined football in this country.

Am I alone in giving matches like Spurs v Man Utd a miss when a year or two ago I would have watched them?

The players of "The Big 4" almost without exception fall into one or more categories of Mercenary / Cheat / Twat / Chav and there is very little to endear the casual viewer to any particular one of those 4 sides.

This week Benitez says Everton are a little club, while Spurs lose to Arsenal reserves.

It is almost 40 years since Newcastle have won any sort of trophy, 30 years for Man City, 1 trophy in 16 years for Spurs and not much more for Villa. All proud clubs rendered impotent by simply missing the Premiership gravy train leaving the station.

All of the teams that come up from the Championship struggle and go back down, and if they don't in Year 1 they do in Year 2.

The rest of them - Boro, Fulham, Blackburn, Bolton are simply there to make up the numbers.

The League Cup Final is another Arsenal v Chelsea v Man Utd v Liverpool love-in, while the best the armchair punter can hope for is a plucky outsider a la Millwall / West Ham / Southampton makes the FA Cup Final for a frisson of interest.

People seem opposed to the idea of Celtic and Rangers coming into the Prem, but apart from that I fail to see how the competition can hope to sustain interest over time with such predictability.

And what does it all mean anyway, when most of the players are foreign, no loyalty exists except from the fans, grounds have been stripped of atmosphere and traditional derby rivalries are trivialised by mollycoddled players as "just another game"?

 

[sully]

My only real interest in the Premiership nowadays is from a Fantasy Football / betting point of view.

I even gave up on the fantasy football a couple of years ago, having organised the company leagues up until then.

This was mainly because I hadn't a clue who most of the players were.

I rarely watch any football on the TV (mainly due to the lack of it on terrestrial), and haven't watched a domestic cup final for over a decade.

The whole thing needs a great big shake down.

I think the main reason I had for switching off initially was the diving, cheating and abuse of referees, which is all getting worse. It's about time referees started producing cards EVERY time someone gives them any back-chat or argues their decisions, as they would in rugby, in order to get it back to being entertainment. The rules already exist for dealing with dissent. The refs just need to start enforcing it and much of the nastiness will disappear over night.

Additionally, video evidence should be used to rid us of the divers. It is cheating pure and simple and I would hate our team to become like that (which is why I never liked Leon Knight).

 

[Pavilionaire]

It will be interesting to see where the Premiership will be in 20 years time.

Champions League places appear to be beyond the likes of Spurs and Newcastle, so what hope have the rest got?

I expect the Premiership will become the exclusive plaything of billionaires, in which case 2nd tier clubs might actually contend but then wage costs would cascade downwards forcing smaller clubs out of business.

Ultimately the best a club like Brighton can hope for is to do a Bolton and mix it with the big boys for a few seasons, perhaps get into the odd final.

 

[Tooting Gull]

Your best hope may be Platini. If he actually carries out his threat to steadily cut the number of Champions League places to the 'big' countries, it could help. Or, more negatively, it might mean a big one instead of a big four. Or the big clubs might leave UEFA in a breakaway. Or he might have said it just to win a few votes from the 'little' countries.

 

[Albion Rob]

Like where, out of interest? In France, Lyon have certainly dominated recently but I think that's a new thing since Houllier went there, while in Spain of course you have the big two but they're very far from guaranteed winning the league, as Valencia and Deportive La Corunna have shown very recently.

As for Germany, the lead has recently been changing hands frequently and the Man U-equivalent is struggling, to universal delight outside Bavaria, while the sort-of Everton-equivalent Hamburg - who uniquely, have been in the Bundesliga since it was founded - are currently second from bottom and have only won one game. But...they're still getting 50,000+ every week, so maybe this competitiveness (and much cheaper tickets) is what makes the Bundesliga the best supported league in Europe.

So where are these other European leagues that are less predictable than "it's between Chelsea or Man U this year"? Italy. maybe? I don't know, I'm genuinely curious.

Serie A is quite predictable in a normal season in that the only real contenders are Juve, the two Milans and Roma. Others seem to come and go but it's usually between those four.

France has been predictable for a few years but was pretty open before that.

Spain is also quite predictable but perhaps not so much these days.

We shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking it hasn't been like this for some time though. Throughout the 80s it was dominated by Liverpool and Everton and the 90s was Man Utd and Arsenal with a couple of cameos from Leeds (who did very, very well) and Blackburn (who bought the title on a lesser scale than Chelsea).

The last side to win the FA Cup outside of Liverpool, Manchester and London was Ipswich in 1978, I think.

I suppose the point is that to a degree, anyone could beat anyone in the 60s, 70s and 80s and you would often get smaller sides chasing the title, QPR and Watford spring to mind.

Sadly, mowadays, if you want to win the league, you're not ging to lose more than three games a season, which doesn't really suggest there is much of a relationshyip between the top four and the rest of the league.

The relegation issue is much more fun, more teams involved and genuine concern on peoples' faces as they realise their wage bill is unsustainable if they go down and don't get back upo quickly, although parachute payments have even taken the sting out of that.

I'd take the German league over ours any day though.

 

[sully]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxY7AsgOxBY

An advert for the rugby world cup, but sums up my feelings towards footballs prima-donnas superbly!

 

[The Large One]

The last side to win the FA Cup outside of Liverpool, Manchester and London was Ipswich in 1978, I think.

Coventry City in 1987
Wimbledon (yeah, I know it's London, but you know what I mean) in 1988

But I take your point.

Do Arsenal play with ANY English players at present? I'm trying to think, but none are obvious, aside from the odd traineee-through-the-ranks who gets shipped off to Reading once they hit puberty. In that sense, I am extremely proud and pleased that Brighton has the youth policy and set-up that it does have. It encourages a sense of commitment and loyalty. Something a mercenary from the Premiership would have no concept or understanding of.

I remember someone coming up to me one time and asking who my team was. I replied 'Brighton', of course, and they said 'no, which is your Premiership team?' I ould only stand there agog at such an irrelevant, almost impertinent question, based on such ignorance of learned footbal culture. I have little or no interest in the Premiership, let alone going so far as to say there is a club in that division that I actually care about enough to say 'I support them...'

It's also indicative of Murdoch's carpet-bombing style of marketing football to the middle classes - something it was felt in the 1990s would be the answer to many of football's ills from the 1980s and before. True, it got the game out of the gutter for a short time, and made it a more pleasurable, less hostile, safer place to go. The word 'football' is banded about far less in front the word 'hooligans' nowadays.

However, as was predicted at the time, the advent of all-seater stadia and raised prices to attract the middle-classes into football are not only part of the solution, they are also part of the problem. These newcomers with new money were brought in to 'enjoy the atmosphere' that football matches create, but at the EXPENSE of the very thing they were there to experience - they REPLACED the working-class, passionate, but often not overly rich men who were prepared to sing, shout and cajole their team (and in the opposition fans) because prices shot through the roof.

As a result, the top level of football is cash-rich, but soul-poor. Of all of the problems that have been sorted out with English football, the main one that has still to be done is the behaviour of the clubs' boards of directors. It's like we've finally come full-circle from Hillsborough, and for all this 'looking after fans' corpoarte bullshit we were fed, the fans are there for one purpose - bring in the money. Know your place, all your Premiership fans, cos that's what you're there for, and that's all you're good for.

 

[Les Biehn]

I remember someone coming up to me one time and asking who my team was. I replied 'Brighton', of course, and they said 'no, which is your Premiership team?'

So which is it? I see you as a Villa man.

 

[Trufflehound]

Like where, out of interest?

Between them Feyenoord, Ajax and PSV have only failed to win the Dutch league once since 1964 (AZ Alkmaar won it in 1981).

And even Feyenood have only won 2 of the last 22...

 

[Parson Henry]

Coventry City in 1987
Wimbledon (yeah, I know it's London, but you know what I mean) in 1988

But I take your point.

Do Arsenal play with ANY English players at present? I'm trying to think, but none are obvious, aside from the odd traineee-through-the-ranks who gets shipped off to Reading once they hit puberty. In that sense, I am extremely proud and pleased that Brighton has the youth policy and set-up that it does have. It encourages a sense of commitment and loyalty. Something a mercenary from the Premiership would have no concept or understanding of.

I remember someone coming up to me one time and asking who my team was. I replied 'Brighton', of course, and they said 'no, which is your Premiership team?' I ould only stand there agog at such an irrelevant, almost impertinent question, based on such ignorance of learned footbal culture. I have little or no interest in the Premiership, let alone going so far as to say there is a club in that division that I actually care about enough to say 'I support them...'

It's also indicative of Murdoch's carpet-bombing style of marketing football to the middle classes - something it was felt in the 1990s would be the answer to many of football's ills from the 1980s and before. True, it got the game out of the gutter for a short time, and made it a more pleasurable, less hostile, safer place to go. The word 'football' is banded about far less in front the word 'hooligans' nowadays.

However, as was predicted at the time, the advent of all-seater stadia and raised prices to attract the middle-classes into football are not only part of the solution, they are also part of the problem. These newcomers with new money were brought in to 'enjoy the atmosphere' that football matches create, but at the EXPENSE of the very thing they were there to experience - they REPLACED the working-class, passionate, but often not overly rich men who were prepared to sing, shout and cajole their team (and in the opposition fans) because prices shot through the roof.

As a result, the top level of football is cash-rich, but soul-poor. Of all of the problems that have been sorted out with English football, the main one that has still to be done is the behaviour of the clubs' boards of directors. It's like we've finally come full-circle from Hillsborough, and for all this 'looking after fans' corpoarte bullshit we were fed, the fans are there for one purpose - bring in the money. Know your place, all your Premiership fans, cos that's what you're there for, and that's all you're good for.

Can you explain that in more detail please?

 

[Man of Harveys]

Between them Feyenoord, Ajax and PSV have only failed to win the Dutch league once since 1964 (AZ Alkmaar won it in 1981).

And even Feyenood have only won 2 of the last 22...

Blimey - so we can nominate the Dutch for the much-coveted "European league which is as numbingly-predictable as the Premiership but without Sky's money" award? No wonder they always choke in the world cup.

 

[The Large One]

Can you explain that in more detail please?

Careful, I just might...

 

[The Large One]

Blimey - so we can nominate the Dutch for the much-coveted "European league which is as numbingly-predictable as the Premiership but without Sky's money" award? No wonder they always choke in the world cup.

I watched some Dutch league football on Channel 5 once, and then really, really wished I hadn't.

 

[Les Biehn]

I watched some Dutch league football on Channel 5 once, and then really, really wished I hadn't.

I concur. Watched a few games and they are truly mind numbing.

 

[Albion Rob]

Coventry City in 1987
Wimbledon (yeah, I know it's London, but you know what I mean) in 1988

But I take your point.

Bloody Coventry!

It really is amazing though to think that the last time the cup left one of the big three cities was in 1987 - 20 years ago!

Perhaps if someone like Villa, Pompey or Newcastle could win it, at least there would be a bit of passion in the town - that said, Newcastle managed to choke in successive years in the 1990s.

By the way, wasn't Matthew Taylor good on MOTD2 last night? He's such a nice boy.

 

[algie]

Coventry City in 1987
Wimbledon (yeah, I know it's London, but you know what I mean) in 1988

But I take your point.

Do Arsenal play with ANY English players at present? I'm trying to think, but none are obvious, aside from the odd traineee-through-the-ranks who gets shipped off to Reading once they hit puberty. In that sense, I am extremely proud and pleased that Brighton has the youth policy and set-up that it does have. It encourages a sense of commitment and loyalty. Something a mercenary from the Premiership would have no concept or understanding of.

I remember someone coming up to me one time and asking who my team was. I replied 'Brighton', of course, and they said 'no, which is your Premiership team?' I ould only stand there agog at such an irrelevant, almost impertinent question, based on such ignorance of learned footbal culture. I have little or no interest in the Premiership, let alone going so far as to say there is a club in that division that I actually care about enough to say 'I support them...'

It's also indicative of Murdoch's carpet-bombing style of marketing football to the middle classes - something it was felt in the 1990s would be the answer to many of football's ills from the 1980s and before. True, it got the game out of the gutter for a short time, and made it a more pleasurable, less hostile, safer place to go. The word 'football' is banded about far less in front the word 'hooligans' nowadays.

However, as was predicted at the time, the advent of all-seater stadia and raised prices to attract the middle-classes into football are not only part of the solution, they are also part of the problem. These newcomers with new money were brought in to 'enjoy the atmosphere' that football matches create, but at the EXPENSE of the very thing they were there to experience - they REPLACED the working-class, passionate, but often not overly rich men who were prepared to sing, shout and cajole their team (and in the opposition fans) because prices shot through the roof.

As a result, the top level of football is cash-rich, but soul-poor. Of all of the problems that have been sorted out with English football, the main one that has still to be done is the behaviour of the clubs' boards of directors. It's like we've finally come full-circle from Hillsborough, and for all this 'looking after fans' corpoarte bullshit we were fed, the fans are there for one purpose - bring in the money. Know your place, all your Premiership fans, cos that's what you're there for, and that's all you're good for.

Cracking post there beardy.I didn't know you had it in you.Has to be your best post to date by a long shot.Mind you, it has nearly taken you 16000 posts to come up with it.A good read
Now back to another 16000 posts of bullshit and a waste of bandwidth

 

[The Large One]

Didn't see it.

 

[Les Biehn]

Cracking post there beardy.I didn't know you had it in you.Has to be your best post to date by a long shot.Mind you, it has nearly taken you 16000 posts to come up with it.A good read
Now back to another 16000 posts of bullshit and a waste of bandwidth

What amazes me is in roughly a quarter of the amount of posts you have managed to post 4 times the amount of bullshit.