Just because somebody is favourite with the bookies doesn’t make him the fans choice. Sure there were some who wanted De Boer (off the top of my head I can’t remember anyone really saying they wanted him) but most on here were questioning him when he was one of the favourites.
*rolls eyes* Pot kettle. Fans aren’t an amorphous blob. Something that, somewhat ironically, it feels like the board treats us as.
There is a massive problem in the premiership today that favours all the top clubs who have money to burn and that is they are ruining clubs like ours who have limited funds by buying up all our best players and sometimes not even playing them or using them as bit part players.......Saints,Swans, Leicester and clubs like ours who sometimes punch above our weight and find players who give us an edge that we do well will be sought after by the big clubs and they dont care if they are on a contract or not as they will be after them.....The premiership will never be a fair league to play in as long as the big clubs are allowed to buy our best players just because they can and use them as bit part players.....Something needs to be done to help clubs like ours to have a fighting chance.....
Speak for yourself. Having put on 3 stone after I stopped smoking, there are times when 'amorphous blob' describes me pretty well..
Something definitely needs to be done. I thought FFP was supposed to sort all this out, but it only appears to have made matters worse. Leicester winning the league gave us all hope, but now the gulf between rich and poor lioks wider than ever - in football as in life. On a personal level, I feel like walking away from PL football. I guess none of us find it easy to turn our backs on our clubs though, even when the clubs seem to turn their backs on us.
For you and I perhaps, but you could make an argument that the joy is going up overall as there are more and more people watching (hence the rising TV deals)
I can tell you for a fact Archers . You know I am no longer going to games etc , but I work with die hard fans , young and older , I would say of the 9 I know , 7 would not care a flying **** if we went down . Their only fear is the financial damage to the club , certainly not the enjoyment of football itself .
I see what you’re saying, but football as a recreational sport for young people is suffering at grass roots level because all the money in the game is being concentrated in fewer and fewer clubs, instead of being spread about more evenly. The logical consequence of all this is that fewer and fewer boys will play football at all, because there are fewer and fewer playing fields. So, where does the next generation of Academy boys come from? Football is meant to be played and watched live, not just on TV.
What needs to be done is the next time the big six float the idea to up sticks and join a European league, the rest of the league should just say “Bye then. Oh, and don’t expect to enter any of your second string teams in the cup competitions”.
And the Big clubs even want the majority of the money....The old Div 1 was much fairer where anyone could win the top prize..
Trouble is, the vast majority of the TV money would go with them, so the problem of getting more money into grass roots football remains.
Yep, and while the money is rolling in, there will be little incentive for change. The irony is though, that the passion of the fans is, or used to be, one of the USPs of the PL, and that is now being lost. Who wants to be passionate about a competition which is rigged from the start of the season? And without the passion, then whatever the quality of the football, it all becomes less entertaining.
Yeah I don’t think it will be too long before a European super league happens as, as you say, the passion/atmosphere will slowly seep out from the fan bases of the also ran clubs. I highly doubt that many of the fans in China/Japan/India wherever else the main viewing comes from really give a **** about watching a relegation six pointer between Saints and Stoke, so they will be all over a league where big teams play each other every week.
