Best thing ever written with dichotomy in the title

Excellent article JF and sums up my thoughts on the game too.

I really do miss the old days when anyone could win the league.
 
I agree with this article 100%. I know that football didn't exist until the advent of the Premier League but I loved the old structure. It was amazing to see the quality of football played on virtual potato fields by teams, largely made up of British players. None of your Carlos Kickaballs rolling and diving all over the place because someone's chipped their nail varnish. None of this playoff bullshit. The best three teams in the league went up. None of your so called ChampionsLeagues where the odds and sods qualify because we can't have the big, important clubs being excluded just because they weren't good enough to qualify as actual champions of their country.
None of this being rewarded for failure in the "Champions League" by being parachuted into the UEFA Cup when other, "lesser", teams have flogged their way through from July. None of this being messed about when $ky decide kick off times and days.
I could rant on but everything else is covered in Fear's excellent article.
I need a lie down now!
 
You do actually get a trophy for finishing second (Which used to be a shield I think), Middlesbrough 2016 ??8FB0DFA6-3ED8-4240-8B6E-2E00309FDB9E.jpeg
 
The more I see of modern football the more I find myself thinking back to when a football club could become League champions in England just by having a savvy manager and good assistant and then watching them build a team that you could win trophies.

Now it's all about the money which turns my stomach and leaves me feeling sad for football and the new generations of football fans but particularly Aston Villa fans who have never seen a Villa captain proudly lifting a trophy into the air with Claret & Blue ribbons tied to it.

I have been lucky enough to see us become champions of England then unbelievably champions of Europe and it's only my love for Aston Villa Football club that keeps me interested in football these days.

So yes the article is good and the Fear is right but please don't overfeed his ego with too many compliments!:grinning::utv::utv:
 
Excellent rant!

My hope is that we do it the right way, by producing our own talent, stay young and hungry, flog 'em for billions and then they walk back to the mighty Villa once their contracts are on a Bosman lol.

Players always wanted to play for Manure and Plop because of the history. I could live with that, now they will go to PSG or Chelski for the money.

Have to say that we could have and should have remained at the top table, but missed out post war to create a brand. Got left behind due to lack of vision at the top. Wolves overtook us in the 50s and we didn't trust Mercer's Minors enough.
 
The Fear said:
That's even worse then Tom. Come 1st get trophy. The rest? Nope. Madness.
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I do remember West Brom getting the shield and showing it off at a civic reception not too many years ago, before that I also thought you got nothing for second. Guess it’s nice to show something off at the last game in front of your fans.

And if we win the play offs I’d love to see us lift something at Wembley!
 
Perhaps the most accurate and eloquent rant that I’ve read in quite a while! Agree on all points. When ffp was introduced by the now-disgraced Platini and his cronies, Villa were one of very few who voted against it. The already-rich clubs loved the idea, and quite frankly many of the others weren’t intelligent/diligent enough to realize what it would mean... the rich get richer and sod the rest...
The Leicester situation is actually a great case. Their owners have a bottomless pit of money and could have built on their title win by buying some world class players to keep improving and establish themselves in the top six. However, ffp prevented them from doing that and they’ve now LOST two of their best players from that team, and been unable to replace with equivalent....
 
To me, there are two possible solutions to the current situation. One would be to eliminate ffp (which ain’t gonna happen) and the other would be to introduce salary caps in the same style as the NFL. The NFL draft helps somewhat with parity in the league, but it’s the salary cap that really keeps teams from out-spending each other. Owners are free to spend in any area they want, but when it comes to the players, they must balance everything. One of the reasons why New England Patriots have been able to be so good for so long is excellent salary cap management, and having Tom Brady NOT be the best paid player in the league (despite him being the best player. Brady is OK with taking home a smaller salary because he knows it frees up cap space and he gets better players to play with....
 
Nope. I enjoy football today as much as I ever did. I enjoy watching Man C because they are pushing the boundaries, and they have a manager who believes in improving players; it's not just cash.

Cash always mattered. I can remember the dark days of decline in the 1950s into the 1960s, because we had a board who never ever thought they should be putting cash into the club rather than taking it out.

I can remember some pretty dire football and some pretty dire attitudes. Nowadays clubs can't assume they have something as of right; they have to do it on the pitch or they go under, and to do it on the pitch they have to get everything in the club from top to bottom working right. The PL today is of a remarkable standard; the bottom three who will get relegated this year aren't weak teams as such, they just have problems in one or two areas. On the other hand, clubs which do get it right can put on a showing. Burnley in Europe? Who would have believed it. The PL is tough, but it gives us better football across the board than we ever used to.

Foreign players? At last football in this country has caught up with the rest of the world, instead of lagging decades behind. And the coaching behind it will start to feed through to the academies and lower leagues. Hopefully we can produce more and more top class players, rather than employ the dinosaurs of old.

I used to enjoy football in the past, but I like the fact it has moved on.
 
Quick point of order FFP did come from Pratini, BUT individual associations could implement on their basis. Hence the Prem has one set of FFP whilst the Champ, L1/L2 have their own set of FFP - just like Spain/France/Germany have their own.

Can't blame UEFA for our decisions because at the core FFP is sensible, it's just enacted wrongly.
 
I think perhaps the memories of the good old days when anything was possible is a little off tbh.
the dippers won it 4 of the 5 years before we did
then 4 of the next 5 after
everton won a couple & Arsenal won a couple
then Utd dominated
it's always been about money really
the last few years have been more varied than the 'good old days' if anything

championship level all round is really pretty poor - but even then look at the clubs at the top and those at the bottom - money innit
 
mike_field said:
Quick point of order FFP did come from Pratini, BUT individual associations could implement on their basis. Hence the Prem has one set of FFP whilst the Champ, L1/L2 have their own set of FFP - just like Spain/France/Germany have their own.

Can't blame UEFA for our decisions because at the core FFP is sensible, it's just enacted wrongly.
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I wasn’t aware that each association had different ffp rules, so thanks for the clarification!
Having said that, you can look across almost any of the European leagues and see the same or similar disparities between rich and poor that you do in England. Bayern have no real opponents in Germany, PSG in France, and the “Big Two” in Spain are only ever marginally challenged by Athletico, who play in a style that is the antithesis to free flowing attacking football!
So, while ffp may have been implemented differently in all these places, you could argue that it’s been an abject failure in all of them...
 
Totally agree.

Football was lost to the ‘real’ fans a long time ago. The amounts of money sloshing around are eye-watering in the extreme, and it’s an absolute disgrace how much heads out of the game and into the pockets of agents and their ilk.

There is no way in any sane world that players should be getting (I refuse to say earning) £300k a week (and more!) but I have no issue with them being well-paid – it’s a short career, possibly shorter if injuries come into it.

And the FFP is utter BS – as you say, designed to pull up the drawbridge. Owners/shareholders pumping money in is one thing, loading debt onto the club through dodgy loans or future ticket sales is quite another.
 
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