Prem is turning into La Liga! No chance for all the have-nots
THE gap between the haves and the have-nots is turning the world’s greatest football competition into La Liga, the Bundesliga and Ligue 1. And I absolutely hate it.
Which is why my footballing wish for 2018 is just to see more competition in the Premier League.
In the immediate future, I hope that Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Tottenham and Arsenal can, at the very least, string the season out for three of four more months at least.
Because the last thing we need is Manchester City’s coronation in January or February.
That’s the way its heading at the moment and with City’s money it’s hard to see when and where their dominance will end.
What surprises me is that a lot of people seem to like the fact that the Premier League is drifting closer towards the leagues in Spain, Germany and France.
It’s where Real Madrid and Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain are dominant and there’s no competition.
And I just can’t help feeling wistful for the good old days of English football when dominant teams came and went.
I know Liverpool had a period of domination and Manchester United, too.
But even then there were clubs like Derby, Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa, Ipswich, Norwich and Newcastle who added real flavour and colour to the top of the league.
Or what about the Leeds United team which reached the Champions League semi-finals? There might have been an almighty fall for them afterwards, but they certainly helped make things exciting.
Now we know the top six is locked off and I’m bored with having to watch a league in which Burnley, with their old-school board of directors, is trying to compete with the sovereign wealth of Abu Dhabi-backed Man City.
There are genuinely some people who, without laughing, think that is a competition. But it’s not. So I want the Premier League to be more competitive in or from 2018, although I’ve no idea how that is going to happen.
What would make it more palatable is English clubs doing well in Europe.
Everybody got very giddy and excited that five of our clubs reached the knockout phase but it has been five years now since an English team won it, so we’re hardly in clover.
Getting two or three of our clubs to the quarter-finals or semis, with one of them reaching the final at least, would go some way towards giving us something to cheer.
But it’s all pointing towards some sort of Pan-European Super League, involving a dozen or so teams who just want to go and party among themselves.
These days there seems to be only eight or 10 teams that are celebrated right across the continent and it’s certainly not like it was when great clubs such as Red Star Belgrade and Steaua Bucharest added a little mystique to the competition.
Money has changed all that, and not for the better.
And if we’re not careful – and the horse hasn’t already bolted – we should do everything to ensure we don’t one day rue the same situation on the domestic front.