Will Premier League panic into changes like ‘light touch’ VAR? | OneFootball

The level of grumbling dissatisfaction with the Premier League continues to grow. There is a realisation that it is a self-serving organisation which doesn’t treat everyone as equal but in proportion to a club’s revenue and status.

Manchester City are accused of financial crimes but are never held to account; clubs like Everton are docked points but Chelsea get a paltry fine. That’s not an opinion, it’s counting.

They’ve created by far the richest league that should, as a consequence, dominate all European competitions. If you’re one of the top 30 richest clubs in the world and don’t win the Europa League or Conference League, what is the actual point of being one of the top 30 richest clubs?

They have allowed nation states to purchase institutions and are comfortable with owners who leave clubs in huge debt while they use them as a bank. They have divided the football community by adopting the widely hated and inefficient VAR.

They have harvested outrageous rights fees which have again further divided the nation financially, as they’re now spread across so many subscriptions on different platforms.

Everton fans are booing the Premier League music; they’re regularly booing VAR too almost everywhere. And VAR has made refereeing worse than ever, leading to greater dissatisfaction. Meanwhile, the economics they have promulgated for so long have turned the very product they’ve vaunted into something that people feel cheated for paying so much to watch.

They have created and supported the economics of a league where, even in the most favourable circumstances, at least four and probably five teams dominate and everyone just fights for the rest. Even if there’s a disaster of Manchester United or Spurs proportions, the chances of simply finishing in the top five are pretty remote. Aston Villa have achieved it but have spent £640 million in the last five years.

I’ve followed football closely since 1969 and I don’t recall such a vocalised level of dissatisfaction with the style and nature of the football played. Crowds are even groaning when there’s a corner and 15 players are put in the six-yard box. And it looked nakedly exposed in Europe this year.

I don’t blame the players necessarily, just the architecture which supports, shapes and instructs them.

The skewed economics of the league has devalued everything else. The cups are no longer serious competitions, or at least not until the business end. Why would the big clubs care when the big money is elsewhere? But because they’ve got the most money, they still usually dominate.

Take Sunday’s feeble League Cup final between two teams which, fans aside, leave most people feeling it was cheats v bores. A soulless game that a pundit on Sky said was less important than Spurs’ Premier League game; that’s how robbed of status it is.

That final was a game that embodied everything swathes of people hate, from the Trumpian trumpeting of supposed greatness, to the crowded six-yard boxes at dead balls, the aimless hoofing, to the commentary dressing up the poor value entertainment. Gary Neville called it “intriguing” at half time. Yeah, like a pencil up the bum.

None of this is a remotely controversial view. Even the tedious cliched dullards who like to unthinkingly and inaccurately mock me as a ‘it was better in my day’ idiot – despite years of evidence – can possibly think this version of football is brilliant. Sorry for having perspective. Now is not always best and neither is any point in the past.

There are legions of Championship fans that actually fear promotion. While they might want the glory of winning, the appeal of scraping nine wins and eight draws to survive a season offers nothing. That’s how dysfunctional and toxic the Premier League is to many.

There’s plenty of football to enjoy that isn’t the Premier League, though its pernicious economics do trickle down and many Championship clubs in particular are betting the farm on promotion by overpaying wages. It’s madness but financial inequality creates this situation.

I’m not sure the Premier League executives know or understand the level of antipathy towards their ‘product’. Football isn’t a normal business; people still go and keep buying even when it’s rubbish. They are often able to forget about the downsides for 90 minutes, or at least until the wrestling starts at corners. And some games like the Tyne/Wear derby have a culture which transcends the greater politics. Don’t conflate fan presence with approval though. There are occasionally some really enjoyable games but that doesn’t rub the problems away.

It’s telling that a lot of the joy this season in north London has been schadenfreude at Spurs rather than pleasure in Arsenal’s success. Seeing a rich team suffer feels good, like a twisted revenge.

If the next seasons follow a similar pattern, we can expect further changes to VAR until it becomes so ‘light touch’ that they can get rid of it without admitting they’ve got rid of it. We can also expect the introduction of ‘innovations’ to try and hold onto viewers without altering the basic model they profit from. Changing the system so the system doesn’t change is the usual order of the day and it will work in the short term at least.

But, as Ernest Hemingway said, bankruptcy happens gradually and then suddenly. Our patience isn’t infinitely elastic.