I don't follow the premiership, not so much out of principle, but because I'm just not interested in it any more. It's quite simply a foreign league, in the sense that it that has absolutely no connection to the team I support.
Back in the day, before they pulled the ladder up, there was at least a theoretical chance of Gillingham getting to the top division. It was highly unlikely, sure, but with a combination of good players, good management and good luck, the possibility was there, however slight it might have been. After all, teams like Northampton and Carlisle had got up there (if only briefly), and other clubs like QPR, Coventry and Norwich had gradually progressed from bog-standard Division 3(S) fodder to First Division regulars.
It just can't be done nowadays without a sugar daddy or serious financial cheating. Even looking back on the only two times I've been remotely bothered who won the Premiership - Blackburn right at the beginning and Leicester the other year - the underdogs who I wanted to win were doped to the gills, financially speaking.
I haven't been following the Bournemouth story, so I'd genuinely like to know how they got up there when they had the arse out of their trousers ten years ago. Surely it wasn't all down to Eddie Howe.
To be honest, top level club football is dead to me. I couldn't give a toss about the Premiership or the Champions League. I'm not proud of that - I used to follow the First Division and the European Cup religiously - it's just that I hate nearly all of the teams in those competitions and it's quite frankly a different planet.
It's all very well congratulating them on their excellent business nous, but it's all done directly at the expense of those clubs who are lower down the pecking order.
LIke many things in this world (and this is where I suspect I'll lose most of you now) football could do with a good old-fashioned dose of socialism.
If it was up to me, I'd nationalise football. All sponsorship and gate money from every senior club and every match would go into a central fund. At the end of the season, it would all get shared out according to a strict formula of where the clubs finshed, right down to the bottom of the pyramid. No club can have more than a certain number of players, no clubs can have owners, only members, and no club is allowed to accumulate debts. Every town with a football club in it is given funds from the kitty to provide a decent stadium. No club pisses about with its colours and no shirt will have sponsors on it.
Sponsorship will take the form solely of pitch-side hoardings, allocated proportionately to the amount of the sponsorship. No company will sponsor a single club, but only football as a whole. If that means a drop in revenue, so be it. The money sloshing around at the top is obscene as it is. If it's fairly distributed, those who need it will still be better off.
You may think I'm mad, but at the end of the day, Brian, football is infrastructure. It's not vital infrastructure like the railways or the waterworks that should be paid for out of taxes, but it's social and cultural infrastructure and as such, also has to be protected from untrammeled market forces.
So there you have it, my blueprint for the future of football. The only reward I ask for is the power to round up all kit designers, have them shot, and do the job myself.