Taking Sides: Liverpool vs Everton

I suppose excitement is relative though e.g. Exeter fans will be finding the Conference v exciting at the mo.

Also nil-nil draws are very often fascinating, you philistines.

Also fizz it up long to the big lad ect ect.

xpost (I'm sure some of the Prem 0-0s have been good value [Spurs-Lpool f'instance] but I suspect that there's a fairly high level of tedium in The Best League In The WorldTM at the mo'. Football should've ended in 1970 anyway).

The good thing about the Conference is that any team has the capacity to have a very bad off day and blow it horribly against apparent no-hopers. This is still no reason to buy The Bad Paper though, Mike. They still hate us, btw.

No, he's made it a one-horse 'race'.

The last Premiership game I went to was a 0-0 and it pissed down with rain, so maybe I'm still just bitter about that (and paying £40 for the privilege). But still the most exciting league in the universe!

Just my perception - I'm not very engaged by things in the top flight of Engish football at the mo' (= I can't be bothered watching MOTD) because (a) my team is doing badly, (b) we all know who's going to win the thing, (c) there aren't many goals about.

Maybe this is the best season yet cos the defences are all playing like gods, I dunno.

The idea that the Premiership is the best in the world though is fucking laughable. Really is. On every level, apart from misplaced nationalistic fervour and myopia, it's bobbins. For every world class player, there's 3 donkeys getting the best gig in their lives.

Dada OTM - It's now a 1.5 horse race, when it was two. Left to its own devices, it'd now be a 3.5 horse race, but that's gone out the window. The stadiums are designed with little vision or sense of history, the prices are obscene, the wages equally so. Ant it doesn't know what it's for. It has no sense of itself except as a blob like entity who must keep on taking, taking taking lest, like a fish that stops moving, it sinks to the bottom. It's entire raison d'rtre is like aan amoeba - it reproduces year-on-year.

I was at a reception last night for the Racial Equality Standard, where 5 premiership club s were awarded this kite mark which showed how they were actively working toi improve the diversity of their non-playing staff. But in the midst of the rather obscene backslapping, no-one dared point out the rather obvious point that the biggest barrier to participation in the lives of clubs is the ticket barrier, which is the biggest problem young ethnic kids and families in inner cities have. But lets not talk about common or garden economics. That's so old labour isn't it?

I know we all have this argument every three months but...Where is this NOT the case? I'm still sceptical that La Liga or Serie A really contain an overall better class of players/football - and you can't seriously be claiming any other league to be up there. Notice I've not said 'best league' re the Premiership anyway, only most 'exciting'.

Name other leagues where it's not a 1.5 horse race too. Presumably only Barcelona and Real pending some managerial miracle can win the Spanish league, as usual. In Italy it will doubtless come down to Milan or Juve once again. All the top tier divisions are 'predicatable' in this regard.

I said this here before, compare the percentage of black faces on the pitch to black faces in the crowd - well, no comparison really

You're obviously not going to be convinced by any pro-Premiership argument so why bother? ;) There remain as many pros as cons I think. I would be surprised if it was deemed to necessary to list all these pros and cons once again.

Instead of pointing out how other euopean leagues are "as bad" as the english one, you should be explaining what exactly makes it "more exciting". Suspense? Nope. Big names? Not really. Glitzy technical prowess? Definitely not.

There is no point in me pointing out why I think the Premiership is more exciting because excitement, like boredom, is relative. The Premiership has suspense (will Psycho Pearce lose all his hair by March?), big names (Ruud Van Nistelrooy = 17 characters), glitzy technical prowess (the new floodlights at the Reebok stadium are sensational).

In Italy, Roma and Nazio are traditionally weaker than Milan or Juve, but can occasionally win the thing, and can beat those teams on their day. IN Germany, Bayern are usually there or thereabouts, but they lose matches, and have several rivals and always have. There's a steady stream of challengers over the years - Gladbach, Hamburg, Bremen, Cologne, Schalke, Dortmund etc. In Spain, Depor and Valencia are decent teams, and the big two don't get their own way.

The Premiership is actually worse than the SPL. The SPL has games where the result is not in doubt, loike here. But the problem with games between, say Killie and Motherwell is not that the result is predictable but that no-one gives a shit. They usually try to play football though. Too many games here, where the result is in doubt, still have shite football.

And then there's the sheer jaw dropping tedium of the hype. Where Sky can bill the game between Chelsea and Arsenal - in advance of kick-off - as having been a classic. Really? To quote Brendan Burns, it makes me want to shit blood out of my eyes. I can't buy into this utter bollocks about best league in the world when the markers of a great league are just not present. You've qualified 'best' to 'exciting' but even that I struggle to see. What's exciting about the premiership tomorrow? What's fun about it? It's stadium where the self-created culture is being drowned out by a screaming tannoy announcer, where everyone must get in their regimented seat, where music replaces celebratory cheering and chanting, where crowds get older and duller because prices get higher and higher, where players cast as demigods have average games and get paid obscene amounts for it and kick some back to a retinue of moneygrabbing hangers on, where the press and media cynically avoid anything that might take the gloss of, as they're part of the very beast they should be exercising critical distance from. It's irredeemably awful.

There's more teams in England and more big money places (UEFA CUp etc.) up for grabs, so I don't think this holds up. There might be a particular game between Kilmarnock and Motherwell which proved to be more exciting than another particular game between Middlesbrough and Man City, but the same is true in reverse at another time. You can't measure quality or excitement in this way surely, it's too speculative.

Where Sky can bill the game between Chelsea and Arsenal - in advance of kick-off - as having been a classic.

Why were you watching this anyway? Sky pre-match build-up is always annoying crap, and this goes for Auld Firm games and Barca vs Real as much as anything else.

I don't know if that's due to mass advertising and it being kind of in your face 24/7 but I know I seldom if ever have enjoyed Italian or Spanish football, Italian in particular reminds me of being bored out of mind on Sundays watching Channel 4.

This Premiership season may not have been thrilling so far, but there still are good games. It is kind of sickening that Chelsea seem such a shoe in to win it but it used to be like that with Man U anyhow, surely it was the same with Liverpool in the 70s and 80s?

Correct me if you are actually saying the Premiership has been shit for 30 years!

Yes,

**in what Hell would anyone want to watch any game involving Middlesborough?.**

Or Bolton. And I'd rather have my eyes gouged out with hot knives than have to watch a Blackburn game. (Although I have sympathy with Andy Todd's one man campaign to bring a bit of old-skool guileless thuggery back into the game a la Mark Dennis).

Greece - well it's nice to see an outsider win. Maybe it's too much to hope that they'll play football too.

Thay might not have played the kind of football *you* like, I'll grant.

Even against Barcelona and Bayern Munich last season?

I for one was mortified ;)

x-post Dada - me too.

I think Charlton play some good stuff.

Charlton are going to beat Chelsea 4-3, with three goals in the last five minutes. It's going to be quite a stormer, and the other games won't be bad either. I know because a Sky announcer told me so.

This is actually turning into taking side: The Premiership is not exciting vs. No games in the Premiership are exciting - clearly not one and the same thing.