Guardian report on our terrible season...

[Roygbiv]

Worth saying that fans of the top 6/7 are often unhappy as well. With that financial power comes huge expectations but there's only ever 3 domestic trophies to compete for so at any given point most of them are seen to be failing.

Guardiola and Man City have raised the bar so high in the league that now any draw feels like a loss for the other sides trying to compete. Most of their fans were against the super league (notably the Chelsea protests) and at the very top you're competing with literal nation states so there's another financial chasm to bridge there.

It might be the most miserable league in the world

Spurs fans are probably the most despondent of all. It may seem insane to us but this is a genuinely big club who have no real chance of ever winning anything. Been doing the View Froms for years now and Premier League clubs are by far the most miserable and pessimistic. I recall Watford having a thread celebrating being relegated because they were so bored.

United are shit so obviously things are going to feel worse for us and we are an extreme case but the idea it's just a problem we have and not what the league has doesn't fit with comments from fans who are doing much better than us. Take a look at the Brentford fans a few weeks ago when some tourist went to their stadium dressed as a bee. Lots of "get us out of this league" stuff that developed into more serious conversations of how many of them would prefer to have stayed as a top Championship team.

 

[Roygbiv]

It's a valid point. I've got a couple of Tottenham and West Ham supporting mates and they really are in the hinterland between simply existing and competing.

The whole premise of the English Premier League is how competitive it is and that narrative is pushed and pushed - but the reality is you can pretty much pick who the top 3 will be beforehand with 4-8 being the only competition. And even then it's the same 4 or 5 clubs.

Maybe once Klopp and Guardiola leave it will even out again, but you know realistically what the top 6 will be and it'll just be reshuffling that same turgid pack of mercenary sides.

With the recent rule changes, the top 8 really have made it more of a closed shop than ever and being frankly honest, it's a pretty shit closed shop. Johnny Liew is right, it's an abusive relationship and we're only there to be a punchbag for these 'elite' super clubs....

Right on that cheery bombshell, I'm off to find a homeless guy to punch in the kidneys

You can pretty much put the 1-20 in order. A Palace might finish 12th instead of 13th but you'd get the vast majority in the right ballpark. It's encouraging to see so many fans criticise the lack of competition and talk about how boring the league is. As Revolution says, nothing will change until the armchair fans lose interest and the league stops making so much money but you have to hope we go the same way as the Seria A and the bubble eventually bursts. I don't think many fans give a shit about the quality of the league when it's this predictable.

 

[Grappler]

Talking about the "Top 6" and their (tourist) fans, is a good excuse to show this gem, from the good old "Fast Show".

 

[IdLiketoRogerMoore]

Talking about the "Top 6" and their (tourist) fans, is a good excuse to show this gem, from the good old "Fast Show".

It's funny because it's true!

 

[IdLiketoRogerMoore]

You can pretty much put the 1-20 in order. A Palace might finish 12th instead of 13th but you'd get the vast majority in the right ballpark. It's encouraging to see so many fans criticise the lack of competition and talk about how boring the league is. As Revolution says, nothing will change until the armchair fans lose interest and the league stops making so much money but you have to hope we go the same way as the Seria A and the bubble eventually bursts. I don't think many fans give a shit about the quality of the league when it's this predictable.

I don't think we're too far away from something changing/breaking. Sky's business model is getting more and more obsolete as each year passes and once that stops, it really will be a free for all with each club trying to maximise their media rights across all four corners of the globe. Sky are clinging on to this model with their finger tips and it's anecdotal but the amount of people i know who have cancelled their subscriptions now outweighs those i know with it. They won't be able to afford to keep shoveling money into the FAs pockets.

You can even argue the quality isn't what it was. The other top teams in Europe seem to have caught up and it seems the only way for the 'elite' to stay elite is to change the rules and keep buying the best players from those mid/lower PL clubs.

 

[Roygbiv]

I don't think we're too far away from something changing/breaking. Sky's business model is getting more and more obsolete as each year passes and once that stops, it really will be a free for all with each club trying to maximise their media rights across all four corners of the globe. Sky are clinging on to this model with their finger tips and it's anecdotal but the amount of people i know who have cancelled their subscriptions now outweighs those i know with it. They won't be able to afford to keep shoveling money into the FAs pockets.

You can even argue the quality isn't what it was. The other top teams in Europe seem to have caught up and it seems the only way for the 'elite' to stay elite is to change the rules and keep buying the best players from those mid/lower PL clubs.

You would think that eventually The Premier League will eat itself but there is so much money involved it will take a long time. I think/hope we are at the beginning stages of it crumbling with the actual match going fans being unhappy with the "product" but it will continue to be this way until the tourist fans grow disinterested and maybe move on to a different league. The match going fans will continue to attend because the clubs mean so much to us but you hope that the league becomes so stale that the armchair ones start turning off. I really hope City win it again this season. Them totally dominating year after year will eventually cause people to turn off.

 

[billyblademan]

You would think that eventually The Premier League will eat itself but there is so much money involved it will take a long time. I think/hope we are at the beginning stages of it crumbling with the actual match going fans being unhappy with the "product" but it will continue to be this way until the tourist fans grow disinterested and maybe move on to a different league. The match going fans will continue to attend because the clubs mean so much to us but you hope that the league becomes so stale that the armchair ones start turning off. I really hope City win it again this season. Them totally dominating year after year will eventually cause people to turn off.

Maybe if the 2 unquestionably best players in the world were in another top European league playing in rival teams and competing for titles every year against each other, that would knock the Premier League off its perch?

This comes across as overly snarky, but much as I agree with your point, it's hard to see the day coming isn't it? In the short term the money of the PL brings (mostly) the top players over here, which in turn keeps the allure growing.

 

[IdLiketoRogerMoore]

You would think that eventually The Premier League will eat itself but there is so much money involved it will take a long time. I think/hope we are at the beginning stages of it crumbling with the actual match going fans being unhappy with the "product" but it will continue to be this way until the tourist fans grow disinterested and maybe move on to a different league. The match going fans will continue to attend because the clubs mean so much to us but you hope that the league becomes so stale that the armchair ones start turning off. I really hope City win it again this season. Them totally dominating year after year will eventually cause people to turn off.

The irony that City can only win the league by financially doping on a scale even the Russian Olympic Federation would wince at, seems lost on most Of football..

Like you say, I hope in my lifetime i get to see it implode!

 

[Klaatu Barada Nikto]

Saturday’s 4-1 home defeat by Burnley felt like a watershed in this regard: not so much a downing of tools as a realisation that there are no tools, that the very existence of tools may have been a trick of the memory. Remarkably it was the first time Sheffield United had conceded four goals in a game all season; if, that is, you were prepared to disregard the 8-0, the 6-0 and the four 5-0s. The next goal they let in will bring them level with the infamous Derby County side of 2007-08, a team still regarded as the Rosetta Stone of Premier League awfulness, the foundational text by which all future pretenders are judged.

I don't really understand the use of Rosetta Stone in this analogy. Perhaps Magna Carta would have been more appropriate.

 

[Guesty]

I don't really understand the use of Rosetta Stone in this analogy. Perhaps Magna Carta would have been more appropriate.

Liew, like his Guardian mucker Barney Ronay, never met a forced metaphor/similar/analogy he didn't like.

I sort of get what he means - like the Rosetta Stone, Derby's legendary awful season is a keystone work, but the Rosetta Stone is famous for allowing people to understand other works whereas Derby's season does nothing to "decode" anything that has come since.

 

[Roygbiv]

Maybe if the 2 unquestionably best players in the world were in another top European league playing in rival teams and competing for titles every year against each other, that would knock the Premier League off its perch?

This comes across as overly snarky, but much as I agree with your point, it's hard to see the day coming isn't it? In the short term the money of the PL brings (mostly) the top players over here, which in turn keeps the allure growing.

It will definitely be harder to break the strangle hold because of the money but leagues don't usually stay top of the pile for too long. As you say though, we are in a different era. It may be that only the Super League can stop The Premier League.

 

[Alex Cheeseright]

Talking about the "Top 6" and their (tourist) fans, is a good excuse to show this gem, from the good old "Fast Show".

Sounds like Americans!!

 

[Klaatu Barada Nikto]

Liew, like his Guardian mucker Barney Ronay, never met a forced metaphor/similar/analogy he didn't like.

I sort of get what he means - like the Rosetta Stone, Derby's legendary awful season is a keystone work, but the Rosetta Stone is famous for allowing people to understand other works whereas Derby's season does nothing to "decode" anything that has come since.

But no-one looks at the Rosetta Stone as a brilliant piece of writing, it just so happens that someone thought millennia ago to bang out the same text in three different languages on the same bit of stone, thus accidentally enabling people centuries later to be able to translate hieroglyphics. It's not even unique in that regard.

It's just an incredibly shite analogy.

Barney Ronay dos some brilliant writing. I'll always remember this about Andy Carroll

"The very fast and very strong player is commonplace, as is the player who can "hang in the air", conjured once again by Andy Carroll's brilliant headed goal against West Brom last week, Carroll seeming to arrive in the penalty area from some improbably thrilling height, mane flowing, nostrils flared, like a horse hurled from a speeding helicopter."

 

[Fjortoft's Aeroplane]

In terms of solving the current issues of the Premier League, perhaps the answer is to split it into 2 mini leagues, Scottish style. Top 10 are Prem 1 and play 4 times. 2 relegated. The next 10 are Prem 2, they play 4 times also with 2 promoted & 2 relegated. This would mean that after having an amazing season like 19/20 we'd get promoted to Prem 1. Then if we get relegated as we did in 20/21 we'd be relegated to Prem 2 rather than the championship. You could probably do the same with the Championship splitting it two leagues of 12. Beyond that its business as usual.

There are a lot of fans watching their very expensive squads finish 11th,12th, 13th in the Prem quite often which must be a pretty dismal experience given that they're in the "promised land". Surely competing to top Prem 2 would be more fun for them? At the same time a promoted team from the championship won't feel as badly outgunned playing in Prem 2 compared to the situation promoted teams are facing now.

Bit boring playing the same teams 4 times I guess, but just seems a way to bridge the current insane gap between Prem & Championship.

 

[Badger Blade]

All that glitters isn't gold - we know that more than anyone. The same can be said for most of Europe's top leagues where at most there are only two or three that can realistically win it. You get the odd moment like Leicester had and Bayer Leverkusen did this year but even they have decent pedigree in fairly recent history. Them winning it would be akin to Spurs winning the league here - a bit of a shock but not totally beyond the realms of possibility with a bit of luck.

Sky like to peddle the notion that the Premier League is "the most exciting league in the world".

Is it?
Really?

There are exciting moments and ones that live long in the memory but when it comes down to it, we know roughly where everyone's going to finish before it starts. If we rock up to the Etihad, there's only one winner. The excitement is that we only conceded 2.

The Championship is a genuinely exciting league where it's a long slog and anyone who does go up certainly knows they've worked for it and you can get beat or give a good hiding to anybody.

It's the trepidation of knowing that even shit teams on the face of it like Fulham, Palace, Wolves, Everton and the likes still have financial power and players that Championship clubs could only dream of having.

We weren't especially excited about being promoted last time round and if we went up again next season, it'd just be a case of "here we go again" as we succumb to another Sunderland/Norwich style surrender, trying to swing our way across the growing void on our red and white, B&M washing line.

 

[Numpty's Dusty Ruts.]

For the teams at the bottom of the food chain, England’s top flight has come to resemble an abusive relationship
Tue 23 Apr 2024 09.00 CEST


And you may ask yourself: how do I work this?
And you may ask yourself: what happened to that three-man midfield?
And you may tell yourself: this is not my beautiful club.
And you may tell yourself: this is not my beautiful league.
And you may find yourself: on 16 points.
And you may find yourself: getting triggered by assistant referees eating sandwiches.

Same as it ever was. Yes, it’s time for one of English football’s familiar springtime rituals: arguing whether [club bottom of the Premier League] is the “worst Premier League team of all time”. This season the torchlight has fallen on poor, brittle Sheffield United, who could be relegated as early as this weekend if results go against them. And if we have learned anything over the last eight months, it is that “results going against them” has been the one reliable defining note to United’s season, a rock to cling to in uncertain times.

Saturday’s 4-1 home defeat by Burnley felt like a watershed in this regard: not so much a downing of tools as a realisation that there are no tools, that the very existence of tools may have been a trick of the memory. Remarkably it was the first time Sheffield United had conceded four goals in a game all season; if, that is, you were prepared to disregard the 8-0, the 6-0 and the four 5-0s. The next goal they let in will bring them level with the infamous Derby County side of 2007-08, a team still regarded as the Rosetta Stone of Premier League awfulness, the foundational text by which all future pretenders are judged.

Even with the worst will in the world, Sheffield United are nowhere near as bad as that. Indeed for all their defensive infelicities, a curious preference for letting corners bounce first before clearing them – you know, just in case – they are actually a pretty capable side on the ball: full of craft and invention, quick flurries and late goals. Transpose this team into, say, the 1993-94 Carling Premiership and they would be greeted like some superior alien life form: relentlessly fit, technically on a different plane, probably winning the league by eight points. Ben Brereton Díaz would be a Golden Boot contender. Gustavo Hamer would be snapped up by a Serie A giant within months. Ivo Grbic, to be fair, might still struggle.

Not that this is really much consolation to fans of the 2023-24 iteration, still packing out Bramall Lane every week, steeling themselves for another afternoon of impotent rage. Doomed Premier League clubs seem to possess their own unique brew of misery, quite distinct from other forms of footballing bitterness: the condescension and the memes, the inevitability of that first goal, the faint souring of a once-fond dream.

Because this was supposed to be the promised land, right? From the foothills of the Championship, the Premier League looms like a kind of sporting Solaris: a tantalising glow in the sky made of weird textures and substances you long to touch. Riches beyond measure. The graveyard slot on Match of the Day. The world’s greatest agents beating a path to your sporting director. Mohamed Salah warming up on your turf, disrobing in your dressing room, wincing at your cold showers.

Of course when reality hits, it hits a little different to the brochures. Let’s take Nottingham Forest. How’s the promised land working out for them right now? Of all the recent promoted clubs, it is Forest who lived the Premier League dream most vicariously: loudly blazoning their ambitions, signing dozens of fun players, remaking themselves entirely. None of which, it turns out, seems to have made them remotely happy. While their fans fume at the latest tranche of ticket price rises, and Nuno Espírito Santo fumes at referees, official club statements fume at mysterious conspiracies, unspoken corruptions, a deep state that somehow includes Luton Town.

But then in the modern Premier League, it is not just the finances that are unevenly divided, but the happiness. Of course the Championship can also be soul-destroying in its own way. But it is at least more of a blank slate, where big teams can go down and small teams can still prosper. I know a few Ipswich fans and quite a lot of my time right now is being spent trying to convince them that this – right here – is the good bit. With a team they adore and a league they are tearing apart and a coach who is theirs and theirs alone.

View image in fullscreen
Sheffield United fans do their best in trying circumstances. Photograph: Lee Smith/Action Images/Reuters

Not the grim struggle that comes after: desperately begging big clubs for loan players, the sheer cliff face to 35 points, hours spent waiting for VAR decisions, 21% possession against Manchester City, elite tactical fouling. Getting bossed 2-0 at home and feeling weirdly grateful. Chris Sutton suddenly deciding to have an opinion about you. Getting rinsed by agents. Getting beaten by literal nation states. For the teams at the bottom of the food chain, the Premier League has come to resemble an abusive relationship.

In hindsight it is increasingly clear that the six Super League clubs should probably have been allowed to go: allowed to join their soiled, half-baked breakaway with its fantasy economics, leaving the rest of the pyramid in peace. The new regulator has the power to rebuild the finances of Championship football, to dissuade impatient owners from building entire business models out of debt and pipe dreams. In the meantime, perhaps fans need to stop conceiving of the Premier League as a form of salvation. For clubs like Sheffield United, grumbling and cursing, relegation need not feel like a trap door. Perhaps, in a certain light, it can even feel like an escape hatch to freedom.

Absolutely brilliant!

 

[Red Hot Currie]

Great article and I agree with it almost 100%. It hurts to see my club being openly held up to ridicule over a season in the way that we have been..... and the reason we are in that position is primarily a self-inflicted one thanks to the shambolic way we are run and the utter, utter shit show of a close season we endured. As has been said before many times by others on this forum, we went up crying "poverty!" and essentially surrendered before a ball was kicked. The Palace game was an indicator of what was to come and the rest, as they say, is history. As true as this article is.... we really haven't helped ourselves this season. I'm just praying that we can re-group, give it a go and get some of our pride back next season.

 

[sheepbridge]

I actually think the tide is turning slowly from the initial "Sheff United are shit and a disgrace" comments to a bit more of a realisation that actually, we were up against it from the start and never really stood a realistic chance and people are now starting to say maybe the gap is too big to bridge, especially with PSR restricting spending and the new rules that favour established clubs with strong squads.

Yes we sold our best players and have invested very poorly, but all three promoted clubs are in the bottom 3 and the teams just above the relegation zone have squads that cost a huge amount more than ours and in doing so broke PSR and so got point deductions but are still above them. It seems the only way to have a chance now is to follow the Forest model and spend enough that it overcomes the point deducations that will follow and hope you don't get relegated otherwise you really will be in the mire.

As has been said, fans of clubs below the top 6 are also getting disillusioned, and they watch teams with internationals and players who cost £50m in them and on £100k a week. Palace fans aren't happy and the have two of the most exciting players in the league, and they are probably going to loose them this summer.
They know the chances of winning anything are very small. Yes, they will get the occassional good victory but even they are now in danger of getting the occassional spanking that we've suffered. West Ham got stuffed by Arsenal this season and others have had the same. It seems that scores of 4, 5 and 6 are becoming more common.

 

[Petrovka Blade]

I too old to bother much writing on here, but this article expressed precisely what I have been struggling to say to anyone who would listen in recent years and almost continuously since I met my mates in the Stag after that first game against Bournemouth this season. The Premier League is ridiculous self tightening farce and those who broadcast it and comment professionally on it are as much part of the whole circus as those who play in it. I love watching Manchester City play their wonderful football, but they should be playing Barcelona and PSG each week, not the likes of us. This has been going on year by year since 1993. It is a rigged business model which is slowly strangling itself out of existence. The game needs to have hope to survive … the eternal dream of the ordinary football supporter. Change is needed . UTB ( since 1964)

 

[Petrovka Blade]

I meant the Palace game ….not Bournemouth … but it was even more true by then !

 

[100% part time blade]

You didn't from us when we first went up in 2019. The PL has become much worse in the last 5 years than the previous 23 or so of its invention tbf

It certainly looks like the PL has moved on the last 5 years.
The truth is that if it weren’t for points deductions, we’d be down already, Burnley would be down already, and you’d be able to get about 33/1 on Luton getting out of it as they’d be almost down already too.
And the league seem to be thinking of softening the whole ‘point deduction’ thing in future as it’s looking a bit unattractive for them …

3 teams who have gone about promotion in different ways:
1. Weaken the squad you had before, lose any momentum (if there was any), and see what happens. [us]
2. Spend money. Try to improve squad. Try to outplay better teams. [Burnley]
3. Add strategically to squad with a few players, build on momentum and fan involvement - look to use work-ethic and energy and team togetherness etc. to help get results. [Luton].

5 years ago we did number 3, and at one point we were 5th in the league. How high have Luton got? Spent nearly the whole season in bottom 3.

At the moment it looks like whatever plan you go with, the result is pretty similar.

I really hope Luton stay up; I’d love to see one of the others go down - but if they do it will be points deductions that have saved them, which I think the premier league will then have a serious rethink about …

 

[jim2007]

You would think that eventually The Premier League will eat itself but there is so much money involved it will take a long time. I think/hope we are at the beginning stages of it crumbling with the actual match going fans being unhappy with the "product" but it will continue to be this way until the tourist fans grow disinterested and maybe move on to a different league. The match going fans will continue to attend because the clubs mean so much to us but you hope that the league becomes so stale that the armchair ones start turning off. I really hope City win it again this season. Them totally dominating year after year will eventually cause people to turn off.

I'd really like you and Beans to expound on this whole topic on a Bladespod. You're more qualified than any of us to know what the rest of the league's fans are thinking.

I'm definitely in the get me back in the Championship camp: the Premier League is shite for the likes of us. The only upside is that we might get a new training facility and a better academy out of it. Other than that, 3 years in 5 in the PL and half-a-billion pounds has got us absolutely nothing.

One minor point of disagreement with what you say above is Germany. The Bundesliga doesn't seem to have struggled with Bayern winning the last 9 or 10 until this season. I'm sure 95% of Germany is chuffed that Leverkusen have broken the run, but fans still kept turning up and broadcasters kept broadcasting.

I have also gone 180 on the super league, let them go, and go now. We'd probably have a chance of actually competing in the top league now and again without them. Can't see Villa or Newcastle or West Ham dominating like Manchester do now. I'd also fancy the Saudi's'd be on the first plane out of Newcastle if they weren't in it. The sovereign wealth funds would be much less interested in a domestic league I think - I hope.

 

[Zipwire]

That is a great article.

The biggest learning I've taken from this season is how far removed the big clubs are nowadays from the likes of us nowadays (and similar sized clubs to us like the Sunderlands, Derby Countys and Middlesbroughs of this world.

The Prince hasn't got the money to invest in the club, like Tony Bloom has invested in Brighton, like Shahzad Khan has invested in Fulham, like Bill Foley has invested in Bournemouth, like John Textor has invested in Crystal Palace and like Matthew Benham has invested in Brentford. This season we are clearing debts and living to our means. Hence the lack of transfer money and wages being invested in the squad, which in term has led to a squad that is about as competitive of a clapped out Nissan Micra lining up on the starting grid at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

I've been to most of the away games this season. Generally they have been a mis-match, a team of honest (and in some cases less than honest) triers up against teams full of £40-£50m players, and when they get tired they get replaced my more of the same. Go to Arsenal or Tottenham and you won't be surrounded by North Londoners, you'll be surrounded by tourists from the Far-East, the US, and whoever is willing to stump up extortionate amounts for match tickets, and they'll all be decked out in hundreds pounds worth of polyester finery acquired on the trip in the club shop. The big six are beginning to bring in dynamic pricing for the big games too. At the big grounds I feel more and more like I don't belong. I've been a home and away Blade for the last 30 years. I'm a working bloke who works hard and going to the match is my ritual, yet going to these big games, apart from my fellow travelling Blades these aren't my people any more.

The game is slowly but surely shifting even further towards the big clubs, the billionaire investors and the nation state clubs. They want the product to become global, and now the Saudi oil money is getting involved, the Premier League is progessing further down the down track towards becoming a global entertainment corporation, whose purpose is to satisfy the stakeholders of the streaming companies, the investors and the television companies, and with it the game of football is less of a meritocracy, and the rewards of sporting excellent is secondary to the rewards and glory than is being bought by investing billions.

So this is where we are at. There isn't any light at the end of the tunnel. A football regulator won't change things, it'll just push the haves further away from the have nots. The culture is changing even more. Having already bought the game of golf, the Saudi Arabian public investment fund is shifting towards football. In the next few years you'll see regular Premier League games being played in New York, Qatar, and Riyadh. You'll see a World Club Championship where the games are played all across the world, and to accomodate this the Premier League will reduce in size. You'll see the Premier League abolish promotion and relegation and become a franchise to keep out sides that'll not add anything to the brand, and less and less money will filter down to the grassroots.

 

[Le Cynique]

But no-one looks at the Rosetta Stone as a brilliant piece of writing, it just so happens that someone thought millennia ago to bang out the same text in three different languages on the same bit of stone, thus accidentally enabling people centuries later to be able to translate hieroglyphics. It's not even unique in that regard.

It's just an incredibly shite analogy.

Barney Ronay dos some brilliant writing. I'll always remember this about Andy Carroll

"The very fast and very strong player is commonplace, as is the player who can "hang in the air", conjured once again by Andy Carroll's brilliant headed goal against West Brom last week, Carroll seeming to arrive in the penalty area from some improbably thrilling height, mane flowing, nostrils flared, like a horse hurled from a speeding helicopter."

I’d suggest that the metaphor is more about Derby’s infamous season being a benchmark against which to compare other shitty teams’ seasons. Sure, other teams had endured bad seasons before, but their attempt that season really clarified what terrible was, and created a yardstick by which other bad campaigns could be measured.

I don’t think it’s as bad a metaphor as you’re suggesting. No one is suggesting that the Rosetta Stone was an important work of literature, but that it was a tool to compare and translate other works.

 

[Steelcitysenior]

(Relegation) .. 'can even feel like an escape hatch to freedom'.

It's like our Great Escape. We just need Wilder on a motorbike on the pitch at full time doing some wheelies.

We can't afford a motorbike, we would have to make do with a bicycle

 

[Steelcitysenior]

That is a great article.

The biggest learning I've taken from this season is how far removed the big clubs are nowadays from the likes of us nowadays (and similar sized clubs to us like the Sunderlands, Derby Countys and Middlesbroughs of this world.

The Prince hasn't got the money to invest in the club, like Tony Bloom has invested in Brighton, like Shahzad Khan has invested in Fulham, like Bill Foley has invested in Bournemouth, like John Textor has invested in Crystal Palace and like Matthew Benham has invested in Brentford. This season we are clearing debts and living to our means. Hence the lack of transfer money and wages being invested in the squad, which in term has led to a squad that is about as competitive of a clapped out Nissan Micra lining up on the starting grid at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

I've been to most of the away games this season. Generally they have been a mis-match, a team of honest (and in some cases less than honest) triers up against teams full of £40-£50m players, and when they get tired they get replaced my more of the same. Go to Arsenal or Tottenham and you won't be surrounded by North Londoners, you'll be surrounded by tourists from the Far-East, the US, and whoever is willing to stump up extortionate amounts for match tickets, and they'll all be decked out in hundreds pounds worth of polyester finery acquired on the trip in the club shop. The big six are beginning to bring in dynamic pricing for the big games too. At the big grounds I feel more and more like I don't belong. I've been a home and away Blade for the last 30 years. I'm a working bloke who works hard and going to the match is my ritual, yet going to these big games, apart from my fellow travelling Blades these aren't my people any more.

The game is slowly but surely shifting even further towards the big clubs, the billionaire investors and the nation state clubs. They want the product to become global, and now the Saudi oil money is getting involved, the Premier League is progessing further down the down track towards becoming a global entertainment corporation, whose purpose is to satisfy the stakeholders of the streaming companies, the investors and the television companies, and with it the game of football is less of a meritocracy, and the rewards of sporting excellent is secondary to the rewards and glory than is being bought by investing billions.

So this is where we are at. There isn't any light at the end of the tunnel. A football regulator won't change things, it'll just push the haves further away from the have nots. The culture is changing even more. Having already bought the game of golf, the Saudi Arabian public investment fund is shifting towards football. In the next few years you'll see regular Premier League games being played in New York, Qatar, and Riyadh. You'll see a World Club Championship where the games are played all across the world, and to accomodate this the Premier League will reduce in size. You'll see the Premier League abolish promotion and relegation and become a franchise to keep out sides that'll not add anything to the brand, and less and less money will filter down to the grassroots.

 

[Steelcitysenior]

Unfortunately I agree with every word of that.

 

[loyalblade95]

Didn't read the full article but that first picture really sums up the premier league for me, genuine fans having to pay ridiculous sums of money just to spend a season watching the football club they support.

 

[Klaatu Barada Nikto]

I’d suggest that the metaphor is more about Derby’s infamous season being a benchmark against which to compare other shitty teams’ seasons. Sure, other teams had endured bad seasons before, but their attempt that season really clarified what terrible was, and created a yardstick by which other bad campaigns could be measured.

I don’t think it’s as bad a metaphor as you’re suggesting. No one is suggesting that the Rosetta Stone was an important work of literature, but that it was a tool to compare and translate other works.

Good metaphors are like good jokes - they shouldn't require too much explanation.

 

[Sean Thornton]

That is a great article.

The biggest learning I've taken from this season is how far removed the big clubs are nowadays from the likes of us nowadays (and similar sized clubs to us like the Sunderlands, Derby Countys and Middlesbroughs of this world.

The Prince hasn't got the money to invest in the club, like Tony Bloom has invested in Brighton, like Shahzad Khan has invested in Fulham, like Bill Foley has invested in Bournemouth, like John Textor has invested in Crystal Palace and like Matthew Benham has invested in Brentford. This season we are clearing debts and living to our means. Hence the lack of transfer money and wages being invested in the squad, which in term has led to a squad that is about as competitive of a clapped out Nissan Micra lining up on the starting grid at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

I've been to most of the away games this season. Generally they have been a mis-match, a team of honest (and in some cases less than honest) triers up against teams full of £40-£50m players, and when they get tired they get replaced my more of the same. Go to Arsenal or Tottenham and you won't be surrounded by North Londoners, you'll be surrounded by tourists from the Far-East, the US, and whoever is willing to stump up extortionate amounts for match tickets, and they'll all be decked out in hundreds pounds worth of polyester finery acquired on the trip in the club shop. The big six are beginning to bring in dynamic pricing for the big games too. At the big grounds I feel more and more like I don't belong. I've been a home and away Blade for the last 30 years. I'm a working bloke who works hard and going to the match is my ritual, yet going to these big games, apart from my fellow travelling Blades these aren't my people any more.

The game is slowly but surely shifting even further towards the big clubs, the billionaire investors and the nation state clubs. They want the product to become global, and now the Saudi oil money is getting involved, the Premier League is progessing further down the down track towards becoming a global entertainment corporation, whose purpose is to satisfy the stakeholders of the streaming companies, the investors and the television companies, and with it the game of football is less of a meritocracy, and the rewards of sporting excellent is secondary to the rewards and glory than is being bought by investing billions.

So this is where we are at. There isn't any light at the end of the tunnel. A football regulator won't change things, it'll just push the haves further away from the have nots. The culture is changing even more. Having already bought the game of golf, the Saudi Arabian public investment fund is shifting towards football. In the next few years you'll see regular Premier League games being played in New York, Qatar, and Riyadh. You'll see a World Club Championship where the games are played all across the world, and to accomodate this the Premier League will reduce in size. You'll see the Premier League abolish promotion and relegation and become a franchise to keep out sides that'll not add anything to the brand, and less and less money will filter down to the grassroots.

This is the tragic future for the PL The Brand. Nailed it.

“You'll see the Premier League abolish promotion and relegation and become a franchise to keep out sides that'll not add anything to the brand, and less and less money will filter down to the grassroots”.