Tonights game - a sad day for football in this country

[Tooting Gull]

I agree with a lot of Troosers' sentiments - for me the single most irritating aspect of this particular match has been the full-on 10 days of hype (let's face it, the Cup final barely intervened). There comes a point where there is simply nothing new to say. We reached that point about eight days ago, but that hasn't stopped the TV, radio and newspapers carrying on regardless.

I also can't stand that there was even a 'debate' about not playing this match in Moscow, but at Wembley. This is European football, not some glorified friendly. Anyone voicing this view - and it has included some commentators who really should know better - are the equivalent of the holiday-maker who goes to Benidorm, has a fry-up, shouts at some waiters, and thinks he's immersed himself in Spanish culture.

And you wouldn't expect Sky to say anything else, would you? They are not impartial observers here, but have a huge vested interest in the football bandwagon rolling on, even if it is up to the edge of the abyss.

Having said all that, I do enjoy the big European nights, if you love your football this is the pinnacle and as someone else said there have been some great ties this year. I hope this will be another.

 

[Slough Seagull]

QUOTE=Digweeds Trousers;2420150]Absolutely no interest in another over-hyped Premier leage match with Sky and ITV fucktards creaming themselves over the biggest match of the season - not.

The two sides will allegedly be sharing a winning pot of £115million - while back in Halifax their club goes under for the sake of a few hundred k (john Terrys average fortnightly salary).

While clubs are plummeting into administration and real English football is turning into a carcass savaged by agents, over-inflated salaries and prima donnas who are not worth a fraction of what they are paid, the average genuine football fan of clubs such as Rotherham Bournemouth, Luton and dozens of others are going to wall and being penalised over relatively small amounts of money.

Sky were dribbling on last night about the game signifying everything great about English football.

Utter cack. It signifies everything that is wrong about this once-great game.

Its not ours anymore. It is being sanitised and ultimately taken away from the majority of the football fan.

Man Utd, Cheslea the FA, Sky, agents, John Terry, Rio Ferdinand, Joey Barton, Flamini - f*** 'em. You disgust me.[/QUOTE]



thankfully 5000 miles away from the UK at the moment so will not have to listen to the 'fans' of the winning club bang on about how 'they' won it...

 

[Wardy]

I think that the lower league sides and those in the bottom half of the Championship should all get together and form their own break away league.

 

[Knotty]

why? are they not allowed to watch new episodes of The Simpsons.

Bliming Sky is just a cop out, If they hadn't of done it, someone else would.

it's the fans that have allowed this situation to occur

What should the fans have done?

 

[1234andcounting]

Absolutely no interest in another over-hyped Premier leage match with Sky and ITV fucktards creaming themselves over the biggest match of the season - not.

The two sides will allegedly be sharing a winning pot of £115million - while back in Halifax their club goes under for the sake of a few hundred k (john Terrys average fortnightly salary).

While clubs are plummeting into administration and real English football is turning into a carcass savaged by agents, over-inflated salaries and prima donnas who are not worth a fraction of what they are paid, the average genuine football fan of clubs such as Rotherham Bournemouth, Luton and dozens of others are going to wall and being penalised over relatively small amounts of money.

Sky were dribbling on last night about the game signifying everything great about English football.

Utter cack. It signifies everything that is wrong about this once-great game.

Its not ours anymore. It is being sanitised and ultimately taken away from the majority of the football fan.

Man Utd, Cheslea the FA, Sky, agents, John Terry, Rio Ferdinand, Joey Barton, Flamini - f*** 'em. You disgust me.

Agree with every word. And, as I always comment, quite frankly, a match between a US owned, Scottish managed club and a Russian (or whatever loyalty Mr Abramovich is claiming nowadays) owned, Israeli managed club packed with overpaid prima donnas from around the world (as per the cover of WSC) does not a triumph of English football make - hence our absence from the Euro Championships.

 

[Statto]

All these people moaning on about the state of the modern game - I hope you haven't got Sky television at home?

Why is that relevent? There are other sports (and programmes) that people like to watch on sky. People dont only get sky for the football.

 

[Scoffers]

Nicely Put Mr Trousers

How they can say this is good for English Football when we have failed to qualify for the Euros is beyond me, these days, the definition of what's good for English Football is not how well the National team performs, but how rich the top 4 clubs are.

It's all arse about face in my view.

 

[bhaexpress]

Couldn't care less, not the slightest bit of interest.

 

[Jamon Jamon]

What should the fans have done?

support their local team(s) for a start, no-one on here can complain when Worthing/BurgessHill/Peacehaven/Hove Park Colts etc etc go under if, while The Albion are away at Carlisle (for example) they've got their feet up in front of the 3.15 at Newbury

also what type of Toby pays £60 for a ticket to see a league match?

 

[Willow]

Why is that relevent? There are other sports (and programmes) that people like to watch on sky. People dont only get sky for the football.

Okay, well don't take the sports channels then! If nobody was willing to PAY to watch football on the box, do you think the Premier League would ever have been created?

 

[Spiros]

Come on, the idea that some teams get 'richer' while others go out of business has been around since long before sky was even launched. Football league history is littered with examples of new teams being born and others dying through lack of money/support. Were Sky or Man U or Chelski to blame for Barrow, Gateshead, Southport, Accrington Stanley (the original one) falling out of the league for one reason or other in the past?

While I think the amount of money thrown at football leagues and clubs in this country is obscene, the fact that two teams from our league are contesting the top prize in club football is a good rather than bad thing. For me it means that English football - football played the exciting, high-tempo, ENGLISH way is triumphing over the boring pass-it-across-the-back-for-ten-minutes-before-a-quick-attack way favoured by the likes of the Italians.

Even though both teams have a fair few foreigners they still play the right way and will feature English/British players more than any other nationality.

BTW - during the 70s we failed to qualify for 2 world cups in a row - was that Sky's fault as well?

 

[Easy 10]

Moan about foreigners in our game, but the fact remains that this seasons Champions League Final will feature most if not ALL of the following English players:

Brown, Ferdinand, Hargreaves, Carrick, Scholes, Rooney, Terry, Joe Cole, Ashley Cole, Bridge, Lampard, Wright-Phillips.

This group of players have been good enough to play a major role for their clubs in conquering all of Europes elite to get their respective teams through to the Champions League Final. And yet put them in an England shirt (apart from Scholes), and they routinely stink the place out against mediocre opposition and end up failing miserably.

What is wrong with our International set-up to cause this ? Capello must be looking at this particular Final slightly bemused by the fact that that so many of the players under his control are featuring in the premiere European club fixture, and yet can't even muddle their way out of a group containing the "powers" of Croatia and Russia.

 

[Jamon Jamon]

BTW - during the 70s we failed to qualify for 2 world cups in a row - was that Sky's fault as well?

not just the 74 and 78 World cups but the 72 and 76 Euros as well

 

[Scoffers]

BTW - during the 70s we failed to qualify for 2 world cups in a row - was that Sky's fault as well?

That isn't the point.

The point is, Sky are hyping up tonights match, making a big play about what this means for english football when there are very few english players and the national team has failed to qualify for the Euros.

It's not their fault, I'm not saying that, but to pretend that suddenly the English game is on the up is utter cack.

 

[Simster]

Okay, well don't take the sports channels then! If nobody was willing to PAY to watch football on the box, do you think the Premier League would ever have been created?

Willow is right - it's far too easy to blame Sky for this. Cast your minds back to On Digital when the ITV companies took a punt by paying a LOT of money for football league rights. What happened? Nobody watched, and they went bust. On the other hand, Sky have always paid top dollar for top-level football. It might not hold all that much interest to fans of clubs like ours, but your average armchair fan and Joe public football fan wants to watch the very best if he's going to watch anything at all.

Still, there is definitely someone to blame for this debacle, and that is the FA. They encouraged a breakaway Premiership in the early 90s for no other reason than to snatch power from the 92-club Football League, as it was. Yet there was no form of internal compensation or taxation put in place, meaning the rich clubs have got richer and richer, and the turnover of the mediocre Premiership clubs now dwarfs that of the clubs that are really not far below them in the natural pecking order.

So in short, don't blame Sky, blame the FA. Incidentally, this is a pattern being repeated across the continent. Nations like Norway and Denmark now have a handful of "super clubs" whereas before there was relative parity. That's all changed thanks to Champs League money.

 

[supaseagull]

I'm no fan of Premiership football, but you guys are gonna look real stupid if
in 10 years time, Brighton are playing in a Champions League final against Chelsea or Man U. I know it sounds far fetched, but if you'd same the same about Chelsea 15 years ago most of us would have laughed.

Would you refuse to watch or support the Albion if this happened? No - I doubt you would...Instead you'd be just like the thousands of United & Chelsea supporters wanting to see your team win.

 

[Digweeds Trousers]

Easy - some of what you say I don't disagree with - exciting football with a huge prize at stake is what we love football for.

But the problem I have with this in general is the saturation of the domestic game through over-hyped and frankly mind-numbing amounts of time that Sky spend on Premier league football.

Whatever your take on the Sky / Premier league / foreign players / wages debate hen these are all bundled up and hammered 24 /7 at one end of the game the result is almost inevitable.

I do not subecribe to Sky and never have. I am happy to say that I have never contributed 1p to that organisation.

That is my choice and some of it due to my political and moral stand point which I guess is not a footballing issue.

I love the Simpsons and a number of other shows that are predomiantly shown on Sky - but I make a choice and buy DVDs of things I want to watch.

On rare occasions I will watch games on Sky and will go to a pub to do so - probably in a way I am therefore contributing to Skys profits in a round about way.

I watch football live or I listen to the radio - If I cannot make Brighton home or away I will watch either Crowborough Athletic, Tonbridge Angels or sometimes even Tonbridge Junior league football.

I love the game - and to me what Sky / ITV and television in general have done is to take the game away from what it was meant to be.

Sad days when a football fan has no interest in the game in general at Premier league level.

 

[Uncle C]

Come on, the idea that some teams get 'richer' while others go out of business has been around since long before sky was even launched. Football league history is littered with examples of new teams being born and others dying through lack of money/support. Were Sky or Man U or Chelski to blame for Barrow, Gateshead, Southport, Accrington Stanley (the original one) falling out of the league for one reason or other in the past?
QUOTE]

The majority of teams that failed in the past were those that dropped out of the football league.

Today most clubs below the Premiership are running at a loss, and one hears of league clubs in financial difficulties on a regular basis..

The Premiership is sucking the lifeblood out of the lower divisions. When they had mopped up all the useful footballers they simply swapped their attention abroad.

 

[Gully]

I think that the lower league sides and those in the bottom half of the Championship should all get together and form their own break away league.

Don't wish to sound picky, but that has already happened, it is called the Football League. There is really healthy competition to join it from the whole of the footballing pyramid, for those who haven't tasted non-league action I can heartily recommend it. It is only above the Football League where it all goes awry, those joining rarely spend much time there, some will overspend to try and stay there...teams like that are called Leeds United.

Without quoting the whole of his post, my stand on this is pretty much the same as Digweeds' Trousers, have never subscribed to Sky and never will. My only gripe is the loss of cricket, just have to make do with the radio for that, like I do for the majority of my football coverage.

My only worry with the Sky revolution is that it will end for many what I enjoyed as a kid, watching action on tv then going outside and pretending to be Kenny Dalglish, Bob Willis or Bishen Bedi...people who inspired me and my generation to have a go at playing sport. There are so many distractions for young kids these days that the loss of pretty much whole rafts of sport from free to air TV removes access to those who inspired many who grace the games today...that will be our loss as a nation.

Sky may not have quite killed the goose that lays the golden egg, but it certainly has two hands gripped firmly round its neck!

 

[Munkfish]

The thing which gets to me most is that all around brighton Town/City Centre there will be so called man u / chelsea fans singing there "teams" songs really pisses me off.