Are Leeds, Man Utd & Crystal Palace ruining our football?
Palace: Saved.
By Michael Lynch
June 3 2010
We discuss the way football has changed and what a difference 31 years has made for Nottingham Forest.
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1979 and Brian Clough was about to achieve the impossible. He had taken what was a small provincial club from the second-tier of English football and led them the very pinnacle of European football. This was to be the first of two successful European Cup finals for the men in red.
How times change.
In 2010 Nottingham Forest once again find themselves plying their trade in the second-tier of English football and due to the changes the game has undertaken in recent years it does often seem as though the glory days will never return to Forest.
In today's climate even medium sized clubs find it impossible to compete with the established big three of English football. It even seems far-fetched to suggest that Liverpool could be in with a chance of winning the title. This is a club with a massive international fan base playing in a world famous stadium which routinely sells its entire seating allocation game after game.
Sky Television, parachute payments and the formation of the Premiership have all done their part in establishing this hierarchy which has led me to form the opinion that the Football League is a much more exciting prospect than the top level.
Top clubs the world over are throwing sums of money at players that would previously have been unthinkable. Soldiers putting their lives on the line for Queen and country are paid far less than men that kick a ball around a field, sprawling dramatically across the floor when tapped from behind. And yet we have no one to blame but ourselves.
We are British. We demand the best. We demand that this small island compete with the best of them despite its size. Spain’s La Liga has beautiful weather, beautiful stadiums, Real Madrid and Barcelona. We get rain all year round, intimate football grounds, Blackburn and Blackpool. The only way in which we are going to compete for the world’s top players is to compete financially and this means paying our players ridiculous amounts of money. It is for this reason that the repeated suggestion we impose a wage cap would serious hinder the ability of this country to attract top talent.
Manchester United adapted to this culture better than anybody else. Even Chelsea and Arsenal have a long way to go off the field before they can manage to compete with United as a brand. Even in the world poorest countries, you can find young men looking up to their heroes at Old Trafford, wearing the famous red shirts and watching their games on small, black and white television sets.