Modern football is rubbish. But we are getting the game we all deserve… | OneFootball

Like Ruud Gullit, you might be thinking that football is a bit sh*t at the moment. And you would be right. But if it’s any consolation, it’s probably your fault.

Right now, you, me, us and everyone else is getting exactly the game we deserve.

Gullit, one of the finest ever to play the once beautiful game, was horrified by what Arsenal and Chelsea served up on Sunday and he’s not alone. It was grim. Grim enough to make vast swathes of supporters tune out, if not turn off completely. It’s still football, after all, and moaning about sh*t football is better than not watching football.

But the act of sitting down to take in a game, especially in the Premier League, is becoming a chore.

Gullit bemoaned the prominence that set-pieces now take, and Arne Slot might nod in agreement. Even if he is one of the 20 men best placed to shift the emphasis.

It isn’t just set-pieces. At the highest level, each marginal gain sought makes the gain marginally more dull, leading us to wherever we are now.

It’s hardly a precipice, because that infers a choice: change or die. And we’ll see neither. Football will only change if fans do. And, right now, there’s more chance of peace in the Middle East.

Why doesn’t Slot take a stand against the football he finds ‘no joy’ in watching? Because he’s slightly less damned if he doesn’t than if he does.

We all had a great time watching Liverpool flail under set-piece bombardment earlier this season, when Slot was battling to keep his job. Which is the default state most managers in the Premier League operate in now. With impatient owners and increasingly irate fans, never with more channels to vent their spleens, managers and coaches have to seek the quickest path to success. Which is rarely the most scenic route and almost always the one everyone else is taking for the very same reason. Which is why the Premier League is a homogenous blob of styles.

You have to be Pep Guardiola to ever be more than five games from the sack. And even he cops it. So much so that he has tweaked his values to join a race to the bottom hyped up as a scramble for supremacy.

The difference between the game Pep preached – how quickly did we tire of ‘tiki-taka sh*te’? – and the ones we’re watching right now is stark. Extreme, even. And that is just one area where football mirrors society. There is no middle ground.

If you’re not winning, you’re losing. If you’re not strong, you’re weak. If it’s not black, it’s white. There are no shades of grey, no nuance. All of which has left us with a game so microscopic in the search for improvement and success that, consequentially, it’s plenty worse as a spectacle.

Many are pointing the finger at Arsenal as the standard bearers for the sh*te currently being served at Premier League grounds around the country, but how can we blame Mikel Arteta for playing the numbers game?

He has been long been told – by us as much as anyone – that this season, it’s the title or the sack. So, to create a successful legacy and at the same time avoid ridicule and the job centre, what is he going to rely on: freedom of expression, or data-led control-freakery?

Usually, managers are credited with too much influence. Ultimately, their success or failure hinges on the players they pick to play in their image. Which can be a perilous position when many modern players are built and motivated differently.

So it makes complete sense that Arteta, Slot and even Guardiola control the controllables. Which is why set-pieces offer unique and golden opportunities that no manager can afford to be sniffy about.

Ask Arsenal fans at the end of the season if they are parading the the title around north London whether they care that their champions scored more goals from corners than anyone else. There will be little to no variation on ‘f*ck no!’.

But if they are moping once more over another runners-up finish, many – always the shoutier ones – will be demanding Arteta’s actual head on a stake next to the bust of Herbert Chapman. Doubtless they will be crying ‘conspiracy!’ too, along with almost every other fanbase in the country. Which has brought us to one of the other main drivers in football being sh*te right now: VAR.

We all hate it. We all want it binned. But we all absolutely insist on consistency from referees too. And those two standpoints are, sadly, incompatible.

Referees make mistakes. Always have, always will. Even when they are shown a dozen replays from a dozen different angles, as VAR has proved. Refereeing, like playing and managing, is subjective. And referees, also like players and managers, are imperfect. You try it. Seriously. Pick up a whistle or a flag and give it a go.

If you do, you’ll discover two things: It’s the toughest, most thankless task there is in football; and you’ll see for yourself that the way referees are treated now is a disgrace. It is a blight on the game that gets worse the lower you go, largely because of what is tolerated – encouraged, even – at the top.

All of which feeds into the general atmosphere of uneasiness around football at the moment. It feels hostile – not the good kind, not intimidating. It’s just angry, miserable. And so much of it seems weirdly performative. Towards players, managers, referees, owners, other fans regardless of allegiance, because that’s how we’ve been conditioned to consume our football now. Through a sardonic lens. Some, though not all, of which can be blamed on social media.

Though perhaps that’s why set-pieces have become so prominent. The 60 seconds it takes for Arsenal to set up and carry out their corner routines is about as long as our attention span will stretch. Why is Peter Drury so shouty on shots? Because how else is he to alert you to something worth looking up from your phone for?

This is football in the attention economy. And, yeah, too much of it is glitter-sprinkled sh*t. But we all have to take responsibility for our roles in making it so.