We have discussed this before and if I was in your position I would probably feel much the same but I don't think it is entirely true. You need a certain level of investment, (you probably always did) there is absolutely no question about that, but most clubs still spend their money so inefficiently that there are still opportunities for well run clubs to progress, Swansea being the really stand out example of this right now. If you look at top of the Championship right now there are not all that many clubs with parachute payments up there right now. I can't pretend you don't need money though, just need to look at the difference between clubs coming up from League One like Bees and Bournemouth (who have spent a fair bit more than us) and those such as Yeovil who never stood a chance.
Yeah fair enough and I harbour no resentment to clubs like Swansea (I mean I don't like them because they're welsh, but) who've invested well and built themselves up. Or a Stoke. Or if you or Bournemouth were to do it. I won't pretend our halcyon days weren't based on spending, though I imagine we still competed higher than our budget should have allowed (like yourselves now I guess).
It's not an unbreachable level and there will be other clubs who crack it in the future. But it gets harder and harder and for clubs like us the Championship is an end game objective now.
My initial point that I lost in my drunken rant was to basically disagree with Cabs on how popular English football would be without the Prem. As I said it was always popular, always will be and I'd guess for Aussies, Americans etc it would always take priority over La Liga, Bundesliga, just because that's the way it goes.
But it wouldn't be the powerhouse it is without the Prem and what sky pumped into it. That's what's made everything possible in terms of becoming the global brand etc.
And there's nothing fundamentally wrong with that. On a logical level the top clubs should get more TV money etc. But the fact is the predominance of the top clubs hurts all of the others, not just in the lower leagues.
The idea that everything should be geared more towards the TV audience than the fans at the game is everything that's alienating people, killing atmospheres. Clubs at the top don't care about regular fans because they make more money off a series of one stops. In the end it should help the lower leagues in theory. But I'm not sure it will.
I'm not into this 'it's the working class game' bollocks largely because I find the idea of class dated in this day and age. But really, the way the game is being priced away from most people at the top really stinks. This is where the German clubs have it right. I think it was Bayern's chairman who said that they have cheap ticket prices because to have them dearer would earn them an extra £2.5 million, a figure that clubs haggle over in transfer negotiations. If we take Cab's point that clubs priority should be the TV market then they really could drop prices and make it more accessible, and then you'll have atmospheres at the Emirates, Stamford Bridge etc
But of course they then wouldn't make as much in the club shop. And they need that money so they can not give it to smaller clubs when poaching young talent that they've developed.
It costs me and my daughter twenty quid to go to PP and I'm happy with that, I'm just glad I do support a **** team because there's not a chance I'd be shelling out Anfield or Goodison prices regularly.
I don't have a bee in my bonnet about Prem supporters who don't go the game, for all the reasons I've said. But it stinks and doesn't need to be that way.
**** modern football
#AgainstModernFootball