Taking Sides: Liverpool vs Everton

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.

'pistol-whipped by the arse'

There, I did it so you don't have to.

It's the narrative - as Tom says, it was the backstory that was interesting. here's the real truth - football is a bit shit without the mythologies, stories and such like. Greece's tale was of jobbing pros expected to fail moulded into a team by an embittered manager denied what he saw as his rightful prize. This team went onto beat all and sundry and win against the odds and the guy got the girl. The end.

Bolton vs Blackburn's narrative is shit. Middlesbrough's is shit. What's the story? heroic team of jobbing primadonna denude a madman of his personal fortune whilst playing attritional football to ensure they don't get relegated as the financial consequences are vast?

Football at its best has stories that rival Wrestling - the difference is that those stories are self-generated - or where. Now, the stories are just rubbish. Where's the fun? Where's the different team shaking it up? They aren't. Why are so many fans not particularly chuffed about going into the premiership? They want to be in the top-flight but they're not sure the premiership is worth it.

Matt's right about the different debates though; my problem is that my disgust and antipathy to the whole thing makes me wonder how on earth anyone else can stand it. That's my failing, not one of those who love the thing.

Steve - I was watching Chelsea Arse because I wanted to see a game of football. It was the last Prem game I watched. I went because my partner is a Chelsea fan, and she wanted to watch it, and I thought I might as well go to. There, I heard Alan Parry opine that he hoped a streaker would get beaten up by the stewards, and saw a really dull game enlivened by little of note at all, and the disconnect between my eyes and my ears was increasingly mind-numbing. The reference to it being a classi BTW comes from a correspondent who saw a trailer for the recorded highlights in a hotel in Europe, where the Sky International announcer was saying that they would be showing highlights of the classic match between Arsenal and Chelsea, even though game hadn't kicked off. There. in a nutshell is the premiership. Never mind the football, here's the hype. Bollox to it. I'm a cricket fan anyway.

You know I always relate everything back to music, which remains my first love really, and two comparisons spring to mind:

1. that WSC thread reminded me of Ned's article about falling out of love with music, published a while back

2. you remind me so much of a friend of mine who works in the music business and clings on to the small part of his world which he can still love while having continually to smell the breath of all the surrounding stuff which repels him.

I know you have great sympathy for streakers, hem hem...

I don't know what happened to Everton! I do have the NEW GUARDIAN next to me though - bought in Waterstone's! - so I will look in there, on real paper.

It's true, 'barely kinetic' was good.

Dr C makes a good point: there are some teams who are - to some of us - a big turn-off. I have always loved MotD with no little reverence, but it's getting to the point where whenever Bolton / Blackburn / Boro / Brum playing each other is announced I start thinking it's time to go to bed, or at least pick up the nearest Amis.

Oh NO! I have just looked at the Everton result.

I think recent years have seen more players of the highest quality at the top of the English game than ever before. I remember the days when an Ardiles was a real rarity, but now as well as most of the best of the British Isles every team has stars from all over the world - there is just about zero chance that a player like Henry would have played here in previous generations. The style of play here is different from that in Spain and Italy (I have all the sports channels at home, and have watched quite a lot of games from there too), and while the best of Italy may be the superior in tactical organisation and discipline, and the top couple of Spanish teams play with breathtaking flair, I like the balance in the premiership - this is undoubtedly based on what I grew up to understand, and no kind of measure of relative worth. Of course there are dreadfully boring and unpleasant teams, but I think we are sometimes prone to compare our extensive familiarity with dreary Blackburn-Birmingham matches to Real-Barca and the Milan derby, because we don't see the equivalent 13th vs 12th scared-to-lose games from those leagues.

The hype is absurd and nonsensical, interested only in trying to convince us every match they select is huge and thrilling. It's almost as if it's advertising rather than serious criticism, sometimes.

I agree entirely with the political objections too - and much as I care about politics, I've never cared so much when it's football. I love watching the game, and the loathsome stuff behind it, the growing elitism and risk of complete fossilisation at the top, are all bad things and I think they will damage the game and I am against them - but I still enjoy watching the game in a way that I can almost completely detach from that stuff.

I hardly miss a game. I don't go to many - I don't have the time or energy, or maybe just not the sense of commitment or whatever, to follow my beloved Bristol Rovers around the country from my London home - but I have all the Sky Sports channels and Prem+ and when there's a live game involving English teams, I'll be watching. When I go on holiday, MOTD is about the only thing that HAS to be videoed. Some of those games are rubbish, same as they always were. It is better when there is something at stake - this point has been well made relating to Greece at Euro 2004, and there are meaningless Premiership games, but until the last month of the season when that all-important 11th place is all that's at stake, I rarely find a game where I'm not interested in some aspects.

Enough rambling. I love football, and while I'd really like more competition and unpredictability right at the top, I'm enjoying it more in recent years than ever before, I think. (And the football threads here really contribute towards that - they have been my favourite things on ILE for a long while now.)

I don't think I explicitly said that none of this makes our league the best in the world or even the most exciting, but it's among the best (on the basis of its best teams' international performance and the number of great players - we got more players nominated in the new world players-voting player of the year awards than any other) and its range of styles is more or less what I find natural, and because I care it's the most exciting for me. Most of that could be said of their leagues by Spanish and Italian fans, and that's fine with me - there's no right way of assessing what league/style you most enjoy.

The players: greedy mercenaries. Rio Ferdinand refusing to sign a hundred grand a week contract at the club that had paid him well over a million to do nothing for eight months while he sat out his self-inflicted suspension. Ashley Cole's sickening behaviour towards Arsenal. Craig Bellamy's numerous sins. Various alleged rapists. False displays of loyalty (what exactly was Crespo's badge display about yesterday? this man has spent a year trying to get away from Chelsea).

The matchday experience: I really miss terraces. I really miss being able to turn up on the day, without a ticket, and just paying on the door. I miss being able to afford to go whenever I felt like it (I never paid more than a fiver in the 80s, even allowing for inflation that would probably be less than a tenner now). There might be more people in the grounds nowadays, but there isn't much of an atmospehre. When the premiership started I like the fact there was a lot more football on TV, but now there's far too much on. In the last two seasons, before I jacked it in, nearly every game I went to got shunted onto a Saturday morning or a 4pm Sunday - not much fun when it's a five-hour drive away.

The championship 'race': I don't think anyone really thinks there's the slightest possibility of Chelsea not winning the league. At the end of the season probably the same three teams: Arsenal, United and Liverpool will be battling out for the Champions League spots some 20 points behind. Most of the other teams will just be taking part in a grim struggle to stay in the league to avoid financial meltdown. It's a safe bet that at least one of the promoted teams will go down (this season Sunderland), sometimes it's all three.

The style of play: Negativity rules. Fear of failure is so big that most teams just pack the midfield and keep everyone behind the ball. This is not just the teams at the bottom. What was the travesty of Liverpool v Man Utd today? If Scunthorpe went to Stamford Bridge and got a 0-0 draw then they could be pleased with it, but when the two biggest teams in England set out to achieve a 0-0 draw there's something wrong. Why should anyone pay to watch that, never mind pay forty quid to watch people who earn more in a month than you'll earn in a decade? I would say Arsenal were the exception to this, but they've lost it now.

The owners: Somebody say something good about Abramovitch. Or Glazer. Or Freddie Shepherd.

I actually think Liverpool are quite good, just as I've said before lacking a Cristiano Ronaldo type player. But the midfield really seemed alot stronger than United's today, we were winning the ball constantly.

I only go to the kinds of games that aren't on TV, that you can just turn up for, even sometimes standing, and the prices aren't so much over a tenner. I mostly watch on TV, so lots of games there is a good thing, for me.

No, I don't see anyone but Chelsea winning it this year, and I would rather it was more competitive - but this is the first season I can ever remember being like this. For me there is still plenty to be interested in with the fight for fourth (Liverpool were as obvious a 4th last year, and didn't get there), the fight for other Euro places, the fight against relegation (I was incredibly excited by the last day of the season last time, because of that), plus two Cup competitions.

Yes, the Liverpool - Man U game surprised me. I wouldn't have thought either team can afford to comfortably settle for a point, and they were more concerned about risking that 1 point than in chasing an extra 2. I guess Man U figured that they'd defend with seven men, and rely on the front 3 to make something happen - and there's enough talent there that this would work often (or maybe Ferguson still fancies Scholes to get forward and score, even if no one else does). As you say, Liverpool are strong and solid, but perhaps lack a touch of brilliance up front.

I'm not saying it's glorious and perfect, and although today wasn't so good (the Blackburn-Newcastle game was very bad most of the way through too), yesterday was very enjoyable, especially if you have some fondness for West Ham, as I do.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,2763,1573570,00.html

Wow: having been 21 PERCENT ahead, the CDU (Merkel) have come in just 3 SEATS ahead!

I think this is hilarious! What a campaign that represents for the SPD, since Schroder (to me) so inexplicably cast himself up for removal from office c.4 months ago. Really, given the way they started out, it is a pretty dire result for Merkel ... isn't it?