[nai]

Has got me thinking / reminiscing

Back in the 80s the main vocal support at Blues would be from the Tilton End, for big matches there'd be chants from the Kop, generally older folk not interested in fighting the away fans in the other half of the Tilton.  They always sang slower. I remember just once, when we losing to one the title contenders, this song that came out of nowhere, a really slow lament:

We will win the league....
we will win the league....
We will win the league ONE DAY
Deep down in my heart there's a dream
OH WE WILL WIN THE LEAGUE

Cycled through three or four times. just once during that match and never heard again.

Of course then it was obvious that we'd win it one day.  Course we would.  We're a top flight side, always come straight back up if we go down, big support base, our time will come.

BUt since I started following football only five clubs have won the league that you'd say were out of the ordinary: Forest, villa, Leeds, Blackburn & Leicester, one per decade since the 70s.

Forest was the Clough factor
villa I'm not sure really, mostly just painful supprting the other club in the City
Leeds, Cantona the key or maybe this wasn't such a shock?
Blackburn obviously Jack Walker's Cash & Dalglish. (Cash and Dalglish sounds like ITVs new cop drama)
Leicester a perfect storm, everyone has an off season just when you have a good start and just keep rolling. Maybe that's what happened at villa

Next shock winner due around 2030.

FA Cup used to be a chance of a trophy, now it's unusual, just Wigan and Portsmouth outside this six since Wimbledon and Coventry in 87 and 88.

League Cup as well pretty much going the same way, first leg of the quadruple

So what's you choice now, bit of a roller coaster ride being bold but maybe getting relegated and promoted or a a spin around the teacups just trying to stay in the premier league year after year.  Nice mid table finish, maybe the excitement of threatening the Europa League place before fading away last few games.

It's a pretty shit version of what I thought I was getting as young boy and teen, I expect it is for most.

And who is the Premier League good for, just the handful of clubs that stay where they are, but it creates a lot of problems for clubs trying to get into it or dropping out of it.

Winning was the dream, now it's just being in the same company as the winners.

[moose]

Leeds, Cantona the key or maybe this wasn't such a shock?

My memory is that Cantona's role on the First Division title wining side became greatly exaggerated in hindsight.  He played less than half the season and scored 3 league goals.  He was a bit of a cult hero by the time he left but Rod Wallace and Lee Chapman had scored the goals; and Speed, Strachan, McAllister and Batty were probably more important in midfield.  If we only had a crystal ball to foresee how he would transform Man Utd....

[tomtom]

Cantona left because he was banging Lesley Ash IIRC.

[Andy F]

TomTom - you’re right about the straw that broke the back of the camel. I think many fans have rather queasily stomached the money pouring into the game (Andy - C’mon it’s not just City FFS.) until now.

True. It was Chelski before City and the Mancs before them (and an honourable mention to Blackburn). Since the inception of the Premier League it has, with the exception of Leicester, gone to big spenders including Liverpool.

[nai]

Guess Leeds is also a good example of what chasing the dream can do to a club, CL semi in 2001 then failed to qualify following season, threw cash at it but  missed out year after year, relegated 3-4 seasons later and only just back in the top league after a period in the third division as well.

[nai]

Rod Wallace and Lee Chapman had scored the goals; and Speed, Strachan, McAllister and Batty were probably more important in midfield.  If we only had a crystal ball to foresee how he would transform Man Utd....

Ah yeah, I remembered Speed, Strachan and Mcallister, and of course Howard Wilkinson, but couldn't have named the others.

[moose]

TomTom - you’re right about the straw that broke the back of the camel. I think many fans have rather queasily stomached the money pouring into the game (Andy - C’mon it’s not just City FFS.) until now.

True. It was Chelski before City and the Mancs before them (and an honourable mention to Blackburn). Since the inception of the Premier League it has, with the exception of Leicester, gone to big spenders including Liverpool.

I remember once seeing a regression analysis (I think in the book Soccernomics) used to try to show that 80% of success in football correlates to the wage bill; the rest being attributed to management /  tactics and mainly luck / variance. 

IIRC Leicester's analytics numbers (courtesy of Statsbomb etc) in their title winning season were typical of a 5-6th place UEFA cup qualifier.  They basically rode a season-long hot streak for Vardy's finishing that happened to coincide with Mahrez and Kante having great years (and other teams having down years).  Not that they didn't "deserve" the title, but it required a rare set of coincidences.  The analytics suggested they were not fundamentally much worse the next year but the outputs had regressed to the mean in the opposite direction. 

[Wellsy]

Basically what happened with the Blades across the last two seasons as well

Last season, they had a run of form, a lot of other teams were playing weirdly badly. Psychologically they were really on a high. There were zero expectations so they could just exceed them entirely. They secured a critical few players and were lucky in a critical few places. All contributed to them doing very well.

This season; no home advantage, failed to secure critical players, psychological advantage lost, there were expectations, other teams are not playing weirdly badly, means that they are absolutely dire (sob...) but tbh when we were in the Championship... we had a chance of winning and glory you know? In the PL the only game outside the Big Six is don't get relegated. Not particularly inspiring. I still wish we weren't getting relegated but the Championship is a more entertaining league overall than the PL.

[moose]

I still wish we weren't getting relegated but the Championship is a more entertaining league overall than the PL.

Newcastle and Norwich fans I know have said much the same.  They yearned to get promoted to the Premier League but found the focus on survival soul sapping.  The Championship was far more enjoyable - utterly unpredictable and winning is fun! 

The problem is that the money in the Championship is comparatively piffling - around <£10m - 5-10% of that for finishing last in the Premier League.  So teams are risking everything to get promoted and get a minimum of £200m for instant relegation and parachute payments.  Pretty much every Championship club is unsustainable at the moment on a wages versus turnover basis. Much was made of Leeds'  financial statement of being £64m in debt - but £30m of that had only occurred because of promotion (bonus payments to players, a share of a retroactive rebate to Sky / BT).  Our "normal" wage / turnover ratio was decidedly midtable.  There are many clubs in much worse positions still in that league and further Covid related losses, matters could get even more horrible and dog-eat-dog.  The Championship is certainly not a carefree paradise of "real" football, where men are men, and the game is free of the horrors of global capitalism.

[Plattsy]

Leeds, Cantona the key or maybe this wasn't such a shock?

My memory is that Cantona's role on the First Division title wining side became greatly exaggerated in hindsight.  He played less than half the season and scored 3 league goals.  He was a bit of a cult hero by the time he left but Rod Wallace and Lee Chapman had scored the goals; and Speed, Strachan, McAllister and Batty were probably more important in midfield.  If we only had a crystal ball to foresee how he would transform Man Utd....

Talking of crystal balls...
If only Trevor Francis had bought Cantona when he was at Wednesday pre-season (comprising mostly of some indoor 5 a side nonsense) before signing for Leeds. Francis had doubts over the French international having not seen him play 11 a side on grass.   

[petejh]

Not sure but this evening is probably the first time in my life I can ever remember feeling smug at Liverpool not winning against mid-table opposition (and thus potentially missing out on Champions League qualification).

Earn it on the pitch? Well done Leeds!


To the posters here who seemingly have lost their hearts and souls, avail yourselves of the last 20 years of Premier league standings. 'Top 6' is an open-ended concept - the investment bankers and ultra high net worth owners are trying to brainwash you with recency bias. Since when did 5 years amount to the way your whole life must be for evermore? The last 5 years are not the world. Look at the statistics for the last 20 years. Then go back another 20 years, and then another 20. You're halfway through the history of the league. Now continue looking. Nothing stays the same, and what happened in the last 5 years is not predictive of what will happen in the next 5. Don't be brainwashed and disheartened by power-hungry cunts, the future is unknown as any investment banker will tell you.

[nai]

BUt since I started following football only five clubs have won the league that you'd say were out of the ordinary: Forest, villa, Leeds, Blackburn & Leicester

Obviously I forgot Everton. Twice.
No rush from the reds to put that right was there.

[mark20]

Sounds like the fallout has already started to bite. If the rumours are to be believed, Jose Mourinho refused to take a training session after hearing the club had been having these secret talks about the super league, so he was sacked. Ok he was probably going at the end of the season anyway, but surely this rules out any hope of winning the league cup final at the weekend, or finishing in the champions league places now, and therefore more likely that Kane leaves in the summer. If the super league doesn’t happen I can’t see spurs being anything other than a mediocre mid table club.

Will be interesting to see the fans’ response as stadiums start filling up again soon..

[Anti]

So as an outsider who doesn't follow football can someone tell me why football got to the point where apparently the government have to chair some sort of fucking COBRA meeting to discuss who and where people play it?

As far as I understand football is already a money dictated game, matches typically played behind a paywall (Sky/BT Sports) and is increasingly expensive to watch. Why is this different?

[cheque]

So as an outsider who doesn't follow football can someone tell me why football got to the point where apparently the government have to chair some sort of fucking COBRA meeting to discuss who and where people play it?

It’s wildly popular and makes loads of money so has been run with a “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”/ “Snouts in the trough” laissez-faire attitude for ages.

As far as I understand football is already a money dictated game, matches typically played behind a paywall (Sky/BT Sports) and is increasingly expensive to watch. Why is this different?

The proposed new league would be a “closed shop” for the clubs with the most supporters that they’d be in charge of, wouldn’t have to qualify for and wouldn’t be able to be relegated from. No matter what’s been done before this has never been the case- to be at the top you had to be the best at football and, in theory at least, poorer clubs with fewer supporters could play in the highest leagues and win trophies by winning matches.

[Anti]

Maybe I'm showing my ignorance here but isn't football typically a case of the teams with the most money do the best? The excitement around owners with money coming into take over is usually because better players are bought?

I get that football is popular and people love to watch it, (in truth I wish I didn't find it so boring because it's always on somewhere so there's endless media to consume) but let's not get to the point where we pretend watching millionaires play football is a basic human right that our government need to defend.

Surely if a bunch of teams with private owners want to get together and make their own league that's their decision to make, and it's up to people to decide if they want to keep watching? Or is that the crux of the issue, whether it's their decision to make has yet to be decided?

[Wellsy]

I mean, this is something governments typically get involved in; usually I'd expect the Culture and Sport Sec to stick their oar in at least.At the end of the day Football is a massive sport, and a massive part of our culture. The PL is arguably the most prestigious national league in the world and so like, you'd expect the gov to have a viewpoint on it potentially falling apart.

Whether anything can be done by the gov is another matter of course. What they are doing is perfectly legal. They'll make noises about it in the very least cos it makes em look big and important and they are populist twats so

[Mike Highbury]

Surely if a bunch of teams with private owners want to get together and make their own league that's their decision to make, and it's up to people to decide if they want to keep watching? Or is that the crux of the issue, whether it's their decision to make has yet to be decided?

Certainly, and it's not as if Arsenal doesn't have form in setting up a league and keeping rivals out.

[Nigel]

So as an outsider who doesn't follow football can someone tell me why football got to the point where apparently the government have to chair some sort of fucking COBRA meeting to discuss who and where people play it?

As far as I understand football is already a money dictated game, matches typically played behind a paywall (Sky/BT Sports) and is increasingly expensive to watch. Why is this different?

Its a good question! I don't follow football anymore, and have not been following the current stuff in any detail. But the current proposals do seem vaguely reminiscent from my hazy pre-teenage memories of the start of the Premier League splittling from the rest (minus the promotion / relegation element). I.e. it is all about money - in the case of the PL it was Sky's (Murdoch's). Was there a COBRA meeting of the conservative government then????

RE the politics it is somewhat nauseating to see them jump immediately into trying to "save football" for "the fans" when:

a) this seems a natural end point to the increasing marketisation of football. Did they jump in when clubs were sold to American billionaires (Man U, Liverpool), dodgy gulf regimes (Man City)? Or when the PL led to the emergence of a uniform "top 4" clubs?

b) it is entirely in accordance with their ideology of free markets and maximizing profit for business. It seems weird that they appear happy to tell private businesses owned by foreign owners what they can and can't do in the case of football, when only a few years before the start of the PL they were perfectly happy to sell off British Gas, British Rail, British Steel, British Telecom etc. to foreign owners. Why is football different / more important??

On the football side, I would instinctively guess this is going to be used by the clubs as a negotiating tactic to screw more money out of the champions league, rather than something that will actually happen.

[Anti]

So is there a genuine and valid concern that if these teams break off to play football elsewhere that no-one else will be able to play football together anymore? They're literally taking the ball and going? Or that people who support one team might not be able to see them play another team?

Your comment about free markets is really interesting and does seem odd that they feel they can dictate what should and should happen. They ought to have a referendum.

[cheque]

Maybe I'm showing my ignorance here but isn't football typically a case of the teams with the most money do the best? The excitement around owners with money coming into take over is usually because better players are bought?

The problem (for the owners, it’s one of the things that makes it so exciting for the fans) is that while money absolutely tips the scales in your favour it doesn’t guarantee success. There’s also only so much success to go around- not every owner that throws lots of money at a club can have the sort of success they think they’re paying for.

Tottenham are a good example of this- they did very well under their previous manager but not quite well enough to win a trophy which is a big deal for them as while they’re rich and very well supported they never quite win the trophies that would confirm the status they crave. Their owner tried to solve this by chucking a load of money at it- sacking the manager (this is always ludicrously expensive as the managers all have incredible contracts meaning they have to be paid off) and appointing a replacement who’s seen as a guaranteed trophy-winner. But his tactics and man-management made their very good squad underperform so badly that they have no realistic way to get into the top European competition next season, which is horrific news for their owners financially given these manager upheavals and the fact that they built a new stadium almost immediately pre-COVID.

Juventus are another good example- they win the league in Italy every year but haven’t made a dint in the European competition that qualifies them to play in for ages. They paid a crazy amount of cash (transfer fee and wages) for one of the best players ever to play the game, a move intended to raise them up both to the perceived status of a team that could win the top prize but also be good enough to win that prize. Turns out the player (Ronaldo) is a bit too old to do that on his own, they didn’t have the money left over to invest in more of a “supporting cast” for him and his weaknesses restricted them to playing a particular way tactically that their team was not suited to pull off- they went out of the European competition earlier than expected and also look likely to fail to win the Italian league for the first time in a decade.

These are great examples of the chaotic, unpredictable beauty of football, a game that is at once incredibly simple but fiendishly complex, dull and slow yet frenetic and exciting. But the owners of these giant clubs hate this stuff as they don’t care about the game, they bought the clubs as cash cows that will generate a predictable amount of money from a predictable amount of investment. They chose the wrong thing to invest in and want to change how the game works (ideally they want it to basically be a series of ultra-marketable, consequence-free friendlies, which is an impossible combination) to compensate for that.

I agree that the government shouldn’t be involved FWIW.

[tomtom]

https://newsthump.com/2021/04/19/european-super-league-is-just-a-cynical-money-grab-to-exploit-fans-says-man-happy-to-pay-95-for-a-nylon-t-shirt/

[Anti]

They chose the wrong thing to invest in and want to change how the game works (ideally they want it to basically be a series of ultra-marketable, consequence-free friendlies, which is an impossible combination) to compensate for that.

I agree that the government shouldn’t be involved FWIW.

Ah, I think that clicks with what the problem would be then - I appreciate the underdog story is always exciting and it must be good to be a supporter when your team does well despite not being the most funded etc!

Is there an alternative reality where being removed from the fear of ceasing to exist due to financial issues there might be more exciting and fun football to be watched?

[nai]

Maybe it wouldn't be that bad

Suppose they go and are banished from the league, obviously most of the TV money gets redirected to the ESL.

Fans abandon the six clubs and without TV showing the same clubs every week fans start following their local teams.  It becomes rare to see a non-local football shirt around towns, although some, mostly kids, do sport half and half shirts mixing up their EFL team and ESL team.

With money no longer plentiful clubs rely on gate receipts and stadiums fill every week.
The playing field is levelled and the league becomes competitive, it's now about tactics and organisation as much as skill.
The football isn't the same quality as previously but the workrate and commitment is higher and most games are highly entertaining.

In the first ten years there are seven different winners and the FA Cup is won by a different club every year including two from the second division.

Meanwhile the ESL has played out to stadiums packed full of corporate suits, the clink of cutlery can be heard on TV during most matches.  Madrid won the first seven titles at which point a grand final was introduced.  Spurs, having finished the fourth in the league, won that on penalties and everyone decided it was a bit ridculous and they should pack it all in now.

[galpinos]

I mean, this is something governments typically get involved in; usually I'd expect the Culture and Sport Sec to stick their oar in at least.At the end of the day Football is a massive sport, and a massive part of our culture. The PL is arguably the most prestigious national league in the world and so like, you'd expect the gov to have a viewpoint on it potentially falling apart.

Whether anything can be done by the gov is another matter of course. What they are doing is perfectly legal. They'll make noises about it in the very least cos it makes em look big and important and they are populist twats so

It does seems a bit out of kilter when you consider the amount of effort was put into Covid at the start though. I'd have preferred Boris to turn to COBRA meetings for that and let the big six f**k off to the ESL to be honest.