following Andy Holt's rant yesterday (see post #866) this appeared on the Blackpool message board
https://www.fansonline.net/blackpool/mb ... id=3258347" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; - certainly for older generations this is a lament for what could have been
td53 Posted on 14/04/2019 12:38 re:Andy Holt is going bananas on Twitter today
He's spot on, the EFL or the FA don't care about the game as a whole, it's all about maximising revenue making in international markets for the biggest clubs, not about a healthy competition.
If you look at the investment in football at all levels in a tiny country like Iceland and how it had paid off, it really puts our system to shame. We still have so few community pitches, schools struggling to find facilities and fund teams. The FA might have done a decent job of funding and organising elite level youth football but in comparison the investment in 'grass roots' football has been paltry when you consider the income available.
It's also completely failed in its duty to protect clubs from poor governance and ensure they are community assets. We've obviously lived that, but there are so many stories at the moment of clubs in crisis and as far as I can see, the weak governance is a direct pay off of their desire to see their product as attractive as possible to investors and if that means some clubs going to the wall, so be it. It's kind of akin to a council trying to attract developers so cutting red tape and waving through planning applications.
To be honest, I feel that far removed from the top level of the game I would struggle to name the Man City team. It just bores me to death. There's something essentially tribal about football, it's what's great, crap seaside town vs crap milltown, everyone shouting at each other for local pride and I struggle to see what the attraction of global elite oil money Vs global elite property developers is. I miss the days when City were a scruffy side from Moss Side - those days aren't coming back, but we could do so much more to ensure the game was exciting, competitive and clubs didn't face ridiculous financial barriers between divisions or even within divisions.
I think what makes me saddest, is when you look at the 20 years before the premier league teams like Forest, Derby, Liverpool, Villa, Everton all became genuinely great teams, conquered Europe and did it without spending the sort of money that City did.
Look at the Everton team of the mid 80s, it was a right mix and match of signings from here and there, but it was a brilliant side. Look at Clough's career, yeah he spent a bit of cash but he also got kids through and picked up lads from unfashionable clubs who he knew could do a job. Liverpool never used to spend on the scale of City now, but were invincible for years.
In short, you had hope. You could look at any given season and it would seem like someone might 'do a Leicester' - when I started following football, in the first few seasons, Watford, West ham, Villa, QPR, Norwich all came close to winning the league. Now finishing 7th is amazing. Wow. 7th. How exciting.
Cups mattered. Luton winning the league cup, Coventry and Wimbledon winning the FA cup, they mattered, they were exciting. You didn't get people talking about how vital it was to finish 4th to 'maintain revenue streams' - teams wanted to win the cup. Simple as. To an 8 year old that was great.
I'm probably in the minority but I'd swap the competition of the 80s for the joyless trudge that is the modern game, where most of the league know they've no hope of winning anything.
It also doesn't help trying to explain to a kid that we're in division 3 even though it's called league one. That's outrageous and is everything that's wrong with the modern game in a nutshell. I think it's worse than nuclear weapons, anthrax and dog XXXXXX combined.
This user liked this post: Falcon
