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On The English Premiership League: A View From Afar

October 24, 2009

Football Money Anton Goryunov writes from Moscow: Pardon me for asking, but does anyone in England treats the Premiership football league seriously anymore? Mind you, I’m not a big expert, I’m just an observer who gets an occasional glimpse of some Premiership match or looks through the sports pages of the British newspapers, picking up bits of information here and there.

Still, there are things that I simply cannot understand about the Premiership. For example, how come of the 20 clubs in the league only four have any realistic chance of winning the league while the rest are there to battle it out for the chance to be relegated to the Coca Cola Championship? This is supposed to be the most exciting football league in the world and yet, there are only four clubs in it that are technically capable of winning the trophy. Two clubs actually, Chelsea and Manchester United, that have been replacing each other at the top in the past 6 years while the other two, Arsenal and Liverpool, were mostly battling it out for the third and fourth places. It just does not look right when you know in advance who is going to win.

And another thing I don’t understand: why pay so much money to players? They are not exactly showing too many outstanding performances. Most of the matches are not at all exciting, especially the predictable ones when the top clubs are playing with the underdogs. You can just as easily cut players’ salaries by half tomorrow, in line with the quality of their game. Most of these ball pushers don’t’ deserve all those millions. The level of football is not that great. Power play mostly and power play gets boring very quickly.

If the players would have been any good, then the scores in matches in the Premiership would have been different. You know, there would be five or six goals per game at least. But what do we have now? A lot of lazy games with 1:0 or 1;1. I’m sorry, but that is not worth a hundred grand a week that some of these players earn. It is not even worth ten grand a week. And how about 90 minutes of a match with a 0:0 result? That’s not entertainment. That’s a rip off, considering how expensive the tickets are.

And there’s more: why is it that clubs are allowed to buy foreign players and not develop their own talent? It just means that whoever has the money, wins. You do not really need tom put in any effort. Just pick talented young players from abroad and win. Not to mention that all these transfers only allow corruption to blossom in football. You do not have to follow football closely to understand that this whole transferral thing is corrupt in its essence. Not to mention that it undermines the national game and denies deprived youngsters the chance to become players instead of becoming criminals.

What I also don’t understand is how some of the huge club owners are always in debt? They seem to be buying clubs with money that they borrow from the banks and then the only thing they are concerned with is how to pay off that debt. The owners of Liverpool FC, whoever they are, cannot even fire their manager, Rafa Benitez, who is not delivering, simply because they don’t have the money to pay for his settlement. What is that? Is that football? Chelsea is in debt, Man U is in debt. It just doesn’t make sense.

But the most annoying thing for me about Premiership football comes with all those pathetic post-match and pre-match and in-between match interviews with managers and players. OK, I might understand footballers struggling with words. It’s not their thing. But what about the managers? They are supposed to be spokesmen for their teams and they are the ones who are expected to be able to explain to their thick players what it is that they have to do on the pitch. And yet they can’t string a sentence together. If they are so inarticulate shouldn’t the clubs hire people who can speak properly and can say something that is at least remotely entertaining. Why should we listen to all the boring drivel.

Something is just not right with the English Premiership.

– End -

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