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Premiership Football Is Killing Itself And I Do not Care

In a week when Griffin Park was packed for a superb game also televised live on Sky in which Brentford beat Aston Villa 2-1 the nonsense in the premiership has reached new heights. It is not just me but friends who are premiership season ticket holders are saying the same. 

Lets take a look at events over only the last few days.

1. Liverpool have signed an attitudinal centre back from Southampton for £75 million who is 26 years old on a 5.5 years deal for £180,000/week.
2. Man City have effectively won the Premiership already in 2017 almost 5 months before the season ends having spent 134£ million in the summer alone and having won 18 straight fixtures. To try and combat this avalanche teams adopt an ultra-defensive mode when playing against them. The Newcastle side gave an incredibly defensive performance to lose 1-0 at home, in which in the first 30 minutes they always had 11 players behind the ball. How can anyone in the 52,000 crowd have been entertained by that? Certainly on Sky it was a tedious, predictable and boring game. Man City have now won 19 of their 20 premiership games and lead the title race by 15 points from Man Utd and are 21 points ahead of the team in 5th position. Is this ultimately good for football?
3. Yet another football charged with assault. Jon Flanagan of Liverpool. Is this because they are inherently violent and unpleasant people ? Or maybe that footballers generally think themselves far superior to the football fans who pay to watch them?  Either way there has been a litany of never ending ( often alcohol-fuelled) events leading to court appearances and sometimes jail.

My team is Brentford and I have watched them for over 50 years. This is real football, played by real players and watched by real fans ( often in the pouring rain as was the case Boxing Evening versus Aston Villa). Things are never boring, there is little certainty in the Championship which side will win or lose, and this makes football a real game. 

Money is ruining Premiership football and I could rant for hours over how the small clubs could benefit from more handouts from TV etc, however it is not going to happen. However if we reach a stage where the top 5 teams are the same every season, Man City always win the league  and the other teams are also-rans, then fans will lose interest. It may be in 5 or 10 or 20 years, in which case things will change. Why is the NFL and AFL so popular in USA? The whole system of player recruitment and wage caps is equitable and makes for a stable set of teams, changing annually . This is actually what football fans want, not to see a game where one side at home has 11 players behind the ball constantly for half the game.