20 years on the money-ball that is the Premier League is still rolling. For the paying customer the expense of watching football seems to have spiralled out of control. Football has become more business-orientated and "capitalised" than ever before and it's all about qualifying for the Champions League (another cash cow) as opposed to winning things as emphasised by a club like Arsenal and even Spurs.

 

I'm unfortunate in the sense I grew up on the Premier League (age can't be helped) but can't help but wonder what life would have been like if the greed of the then "big 5" in breaking away from the Football League for TV deals and lucrative sums of money through commercialising etc had never happened.

 

I suppose the pros of the Premier League is that it's broadcast all over the world for fans to see, that has arguably resulted in the exponential growth in fanbase for the "Sky 4" Arsenal, United, Chelsea and Liverpool but then the selfish part of me thinks it has come at the expense of (i) The Working Class (ii) Domestic fans.

 

Sky/Premier League seems to have brought about a new generation of football fan, so much of the history/tradition of English Football Clubs is lost and forgotten. Sky is a bit superficial in the sense that the experience isn't the same, you only see one thing from one camera angle. Your watching the exact same thing at the same time as everybody else, at a football ground it's different and you can see the whole pitch. It's little details like that. We see referees/officials castigated on a daily basis for things we have the benefit of seeing multiple times on replay.

 

On Sky Sports News, you tune in on a Monday and there's no talk about football it's all politics i.e racism, homophobia, sexism, shirt pulling, diving and all PC nonsense and middle class people giving an opinion on a working class man's game and sensationalising it i.e the Shawcross/Fellaini being case in point.

 

 

To get back to the point 20 years on do you feel the creation of the Premier League has been a good thing or bad thing? If the opportunity to scrap it and go back into one Football League tomorrow came along would you take it?

IIRC, the Football League was more competitive than the Premier League, which has been largely dominated by one team with other teams only briefly breaking the monopoly for various reasons. 

 

I am not English, but I have often heard that PL football, especially with all-seater stadia (thanks to Hillsborough) has become fairly inaccessible to the man on the street. It's also become inaccessible to the kid on the street who would love to see his heroes in action. 

 

If they don't already, these clubs should make it cheaper for local kids to attend their games. Blackburn flirted with that in the past. 

 

Ultimately however, I wouldn't mind it if the Football League suddenly returned - much has been made of Sky's connections to Man U and it wouldn't be a bad thing to see Man U's monopoly weakened. 

I prefered the concept of DIVS 1 2 3 4.....I think it made all divisions as one, rather than ....them n us

Well i wasn't really around when it was division one so when it comes to the Premier league i wouldn't know any better. I am happy with the way it is, i would like to see The Championship, League 1 and League 2 return to division 1,2 and 3 though.

I'm also too young to have watched the first division (born in 92), but from what I gather the major difference has been that it's allowed a select few clubs to monopolize the league and everyone else is just trying to survive (as seen in that outside of the traditional "big 4", only spurs, everton and villa haven't been relegated).

 

Only 5 teams have won the league in the past 20 years, and 12 of them have been won by United. Looking back at the winners in the decades prior to the PL, there was a way bigger variety of teams winning it, and especially a bigger variety of teams placing in the top 3. It's pretty much made it impossible for anyone to have a realistic chance of challenging for the title unless you have the big money to pay for the big players.

 

And on the other side of the coin, it's becomes extremely difficult to stay up once you get promoted, and clubs that do get relegated normally have to offload all their good players and build an entirely new team because of the gulf in income.

 

Overall, it's benefited the rich clubs like us, United and Arsenal, but for the clubs that historically have been successful but don't have the finances that we do (the likes of Everton, Villa, etc.), and infact just everyone else in general, they've just been royally f**ked over.

 

In a way it would make the more competition more interesting if all the teams had a more even chance of winning it. Every game would be more exciting and it wouldn't be monopolized by anyone. However at the same time, theres a good chance that would greatly reduce our chances of winning.

 

So for us at least, this way is better.

I far preferred the days of Divisions 1, 2, 3 & 4, much more straightforward. I've never liked the eliteness (is that a word?) of the Premiership, and since it's creation the richer clubs have got richer, and the rest have got left behind. The only way for a club to become one of the rich elite is if a vastly wealthy geezer comes in and takes them over, like Abramovich for instance.

 

The old Division One contained 22 teams, and was far more competitive than the Premiership is - much more of a level playing field back then.

Looking back now, it seems unbelievable that a team such as Forest could scrape promotion in 1976/77 and then win Divsion 1 Title the following season.

 

Then go on and win 2 European Cups in the following 2 seasons !