This was written and put on a Spurs site but I think the whole thing is mirrors what most people are feeling after yesterday...Read it all...it's well worth it.
2nd Sept 2008 - Everton Are Four Points Clear But Sunderland Can Still Catch Them by David Hayes
I find it increasingly difficult to pinpoint what part of my psyche drew me back year after year to Premiership football. The experience is like sitting in what was once your local but now has stiff trendy furniture, abstract art, moody lighting, and the constant drone of ambient coffee house dance music; all this accompanied by jacked up prices on a pint and tampered plumbing. Sitting in a stench of sewage, piss and bleach, beside a banker shouting into his iPhone, whilst being served reluctantly by a barman who clearly considers it a favour to take your money, you question why you’re still coming here. ‘It used to be nice’ you shrug.
Finally, I think, I no longer care. Why should I persist? What is left for me here that I continue to pour love, hope and money into an industry so rancid that drug lords and arms traders must consider it untoward? This summer has been the greatest parade of greed, ego, and straight up badness by a pantheon of increasingly loathsome villains posing as heroes. Ronaldo was a slave. Sepp Blatter, whose policies are dictated by whatever is best for the global development of Sepp Blatter, agreed. Frank Lampard held the club he supposedly loved to ransom, and then returned to kissing the badge once the swag had been handed over. Perhaps the most despicable (and indicative) of all was Adebayor. Given a chance to demonstrate his skills at a higher level and then persisted with, encouraged and supported when these skills were not immediately evident, he then declared his dream was to move to Barcelona after a single season of justifying this faith. A salary hike later and the Arsenal crest was next in line for a slobbering (but then what’s tens of thousands of pounds per week between lovers). Of course the list goes on; Gillette and Hicks, Joey Barton, Thaksin Shinawatra, Peter Kenyon, Rio Ferdinand, Ashley Cole, Bradley Wright Philips… so on, so forth. And of course Dimitar Berbatov.
I’m only a relatively new Spurs supporter, dating back to the famous five, but how much the game has changed for the deeply dire worse. Back then, and back then being only a decade or so ago, there was a genuine belief that anything was possible. And why not? Blackburn won the league and Newcastle should have. The old UEFA cup was a beacon to the millions of fans of the also-rans. The dream was standard. The readily achievable task of finishing fifth or sixth ushered your club into a world of proper European glamour. Once there you could expect nights in the Nou Camp or San Siro, to become a bigger club overnight and make a tidy profit in the process. Use this advantage wisely and maybe, as long as you kept it to yourself and other romantics, you could talk about winning something; of course a couple of shrewd purchases back then went a long way (today it merely influences where a club finishes within their preordained league within a league).
What is there now? A closed shop of Champions League clubs and even within these confines a divide of contenders and survivors has emerged. Manchester City’s almost certain leap into this pool will eliminate either Liverpool or Arsenal. Whoever goes first will possibly stay gone, the financial consequences of qualifying or not qualifying for club football’s elite competition so great they instantly self perpetuate. Elite as it is, the Champions League itself is becoming a dull exercise; potential winners are fewer and further between, their teams composed of interchangeable multinational millionaire mercenaries. Sadder again is the UEFA Cup, football’s Skegness or Blackpool, only for those who don’t get a proper holiday.
For the rest of the league the Man City deal effectively ends football. For a while there was leeway for hopes that a team like Spurs or Everton or Villa could galvanise just as Liverpool’s assets were frozen or Arsenal collapsed on adolescent shoulders. There is now a hurdle too many and the best of the rest must contend to polish the glass ceiling, accepting their places like Charlton, Wimbledon or Leicester were content to do in the past. The chance of success, once slim, is now laughable. For the clubs below this middle tier the future is bleaker still. Get a good coach, a good team together, a blend of youth and experience, work hard, get promoted, stay promoted, what’s possible then? The answer today is absolutely nothing. Lose any half decent players and with them moral. Go back down only to return a couple of years later and do the same again, repeating indefinitely. Either that or go into total financial meltdown and disappear into obscurity.
What I want is for everyone to stop caring. What I want is empty Villa Parks, Goodison Parks, Upton Parks, Fratton Parks. Empty Emirates, empty Lane. Rails and rails of unsold replica jerseys and not a single third choice strip, of any club, purchased in the UK. I want TV audiences so low that even WKD pull their ads. I want Asia’s love of football to prove a passing craze in a continent that loves a fad. I want the mere mention of a WAG to drop a Red Tops circulation two fold. I want the sheiks and oligarchs to grow tired of their toy, the tycoons disenchanted with their franchise. I want to cheer men like Gary Mabbutt and Teddy Sheringham again, fear opponents like Paul McGrath and Alan Shearer again, and never be exposed to another Didier Drogba or Sol Campbell.
I don’t believe this will happen. But if it does maybe one day I’ll take a seat in a comfortable pub where a reasonably priced, well poured pint of Guinness is presented graciously in front of me, and notice a game such as Everton/West Ham on TV in the corner. Maybe I’ll overhear the commentary, maybe “Everton are four points clear but Sunderland can still catch them.” And maybe then I can care again.
David Hayes
Still...a couple of weeks and we'll all be shouting at the tv and radios again. Posting about how we played etc until January.
2nd Sept 2008 - Everton Are Four Points Clear But Sunderland Can Still Catch Them by David Hayes
I find it increasingly difficult to pinpoint what part of my psyche drew me back year after year to Premiership football. The experience is like sitting in what was once your local but now has stiff trendy furniture, abstract art, moody lighting, and the constant drone of ambient coffee house dance music; all this accompanied by jacked up prices on a pint and tampered plumbing. Sitting in a stench of sewage, piss and bleach, beside a banker shouting into his iPhone, whilst being served reluctantly by a barman who clearly considers it a favour to take your money, you question why you’re still coming here. ‘It used to be nice’ you shrug.
Finally, I think, I no longer care. Why should I persist? What is left for me here that I continue to pour love, hope and money into an industry so rancid that drug lords and arms traders must consider it untoward? This summer has been the greatest parade of greed, ego, and straight up badness by a pantheon of increasingly loathsome villains posing as heroes. Ronaldo was a slave. Sepp Blatter, whose policies are dictated by whatever is best for the global development of Sepp Blatter, agreed. Frank Lampard held the club he supposedly loved to ransom, and then returned to kissing the badge once the swag had been handed over. Perhaps the most despicable (and indicative) of all was Adebayor. Given a chance to demonstrate his skills at a higher level and then persisted with, encouraged and supported when these skills were not immediately evident, he then declared his dream was to move to Barcelona after a single season of justifying this faith. A salary hike later and the Arsenal crest was next in line for a slobbering (but then what’s tens of thousands of pounds per week between lovers). Of course the list goes on; Gillette and Hicks, Joey Barton, Thaksin Shinawatra, Peter Kenyon, Rio Ferdinand, Ashley Cole, Bradley Wright Philips… so on, so forth. And of course Dimitar Berbatov.
I’m only a relatively new Spurs supporter, dating back to the famous five, but how much the game has changed for the deeply dire worse. Back then, and back then being only a decade or so ago, there was a genuine belief that anything was possible. And why not? Blackburn won the league and Newcastle should have. The old UEFA cup was a beacon to the millions of fans of the also-rans. The dream was standard. The readily achievable task of finishing fifth or sixth ushered your club into a world of proper European glamour. Once there you could expect nights in the Nou Camp or San Siro, to become a bigger club overnight and make a tidy profit in the process. Use this advantage wisely and maybe, as long as you kept it to yourself and other romantics, you could talk about winning something; of course a couple of shrewd purchases back then went a long way (today it merely influences where a club finishes within their preordained league within a league).
What is there now? A closed shop of Champions League clubs and even within these confines a divide of contenders and survivors has emerged. Manchester City’s almost certain leap into this pool will eliminate either Liverpool or Arsenal. Whoever goes first will possibly stay gone, the financial consequences of qualifying or not qualifying for club football’s elite competition so great they instantly self perpetuate. Elite as it is, the Champions League itself is becoming a dull exercise; potential winners are fewer and further between, their teams composed of interchangeable multinational millionaire mercenaries. Sadder again is the UEFA Cup, football’s Skegness or Blackpool, only for those who don’t get a proper holiday.
For the rest of the league the Man City deal effectively ends football. For a while there was leeway for hopes that a team like Spurs or Everton or Villa could galvanise just as Liverpool’s assets were frozen or Arsenal collapsed on adolescent shoulders. There is now a hurdle too many and the best of the rest must contend to polish the glass ceiling, accepting their places like Charlton, Wimbledon or Leicester were content to do in the past. The chance of success, once slim, is now laughable. For the clubs below this middle tier the future is bleaker still. Get a good coach, a good team together, a blend of youth and experience, work hard, get promoted, stay promoted, what’s possible then? The answer today is absolutely nothing. Lose any half decent players and with them moral. Go back down only to return a couple of years later and do the same again, repeating indefinitely. Either that or go into total financial meltdown and disappear into obscurity.
What I want is for everyone to stop caring. What I want is empty Villa Parks, Goodison Parks, Upton Parks, Fratton Parks. Empty Emirates, empty Lane. Rails and rails of unsold replica jerseys and not a single third choice strip, of any club, purchased in the UK. I want TV audiences so low that even WKD pull their ads. I want Asia’s love of football to prove a passing craze in a continent that loves a fad. I want the mere mention of a WAG to drop a Red Tops circulation two fold. I want the sheiks and oligarchs to grow tired of their toy, the tycoons disenchanted with their franchise. I want to cheer men like Gary Mabbutt and Teddy Sheringham again, fear opponents like Paul McGrath and Alan Shearer again, and never be exposed to another Didier Drogba or Sol Campbell.
I don’t believe this will happen. But if it does maybe one day I’ll take a seat in a comfortable pub where a reasonably priced, well poured pint of Guinness is presented graciously in front of me, and notice a game such as Everton/West Ham on TV in the corner. Maybe I’ll overhear the commentary, maybe “Everton are four points clear but Sunderland can still catch them.” And maybe then I can care again.
David Hayes
Still...a couple of weeks and we'll all be shouting at the tv and radios again. Posting about how we played etc until January.
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