By Michael Lynch
January 14 2004

What do you think is putting our beautiful game in jepardy? Drugs? Crime? Hooligans? The media? or money? Just a glance at the Premiership table will tell you what money's doing. The richest teams are top and once glorious Leeds in the relegation zone!

 

Such is the state of English football today, that if you were to say a team outside of Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea were to win any major English competition you'd probably be laughed at. Never again will a feat such as Nottingham Forest's winning of the league in first season up under the management of Brian Clough be achieved.

The Premiership has become what it hates most... the new SPL! Manchester United and Arsenal are our equivalent of Celtic and Rangers. We may say that the league "Way" up North is s*** as their are only two good teams and the rest are rubbish- but is our league any different.

Leeds United. What has gone wrong? Plying their trade in Europe just a few seasons back and now look at them! Once they go down they will continue crashing down the divisions faster than Wimbledon! Even in Division One they'll be considered a c*** team with all their prize assets having to leave along with their youngsters. Then their worst players will have to be sold in Division Two to teams that are in need of players like that e.g.. Derby County. This is a symbol that football, these days, is all about money and is in danger of going the same way as professional Boxing. Corrupt. Gangsters choosing who wins and loses and people taking part only for the money.

Someone once said "Money is the root of all evil" and I'm not into that sort of thing so I'm not so sure as to who said it, but what I do know is that if that is what is going to ruin our beautiful game then they are darn right! (and no I wouldn't use the word 'darn' in real life.)

And with transfer fees rising, the stupidly high purchase of Rio Ferdinand was a prime example (and as a Forest fan I have to apologise for this as we made the first million pound signing) so will ticket prices, shirt prices and all other merchandise prices. Shirts already cost 40 quid and will probably cost even more in three year's time!

Then there's individual player sponsorship. Starting with the cheap shirt sponsors in say, the Accrington Stanley matchday programme, to the PEPSI sponsorship of long haired, walking advert David Beckham which would see him get fined if he were to have a drink of Coca Cola- in fact Becks (England Captain) actually gets paid more annually from advertising than his paychecks from his recognised profession football playing! And that's a f****** Real Madrid player who gets paid some of the highest wages in all of football!

There's a lot more wrong with football but there's a lot good about it too. A paragraph about all the beauties of football would be too much so I just wrote a list of the goods and bad things. Ended with could so there's a positive side to the story!

 

IT'S RUINING THE B****** GAME!!!

• Derby County
• The big three
• Money
• David Beckham
• More...

 

WHY IT'S STILL THE BEAUTIFUL GAME...

• The Hammerettes
• The atmosphere
• The city pride
• The entertainment factor
• The skill of SOME players
• Nottingham Forest and watching any team other than Derby
• More...

 

What do you think makes the game beautiful or ruining it? Discuss it on our Message Board!!!

 

 

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