Football in ten years - a dead sport

On the pitch, the game is increasingly a statistical exercise. Every player's role is measurable, via Opta stats and Prozone. Lampard has said he was unfairly criticised for his non-displays at the World Cup because his stats were ok: he got the requisite number of shots away, completed the target percentage of passes.

Every game at Premier League level is now, broadly, a product of a spreadsheet. Negate the opposition, perform efficiently to your role. Competency, discipline, efficiency: these are the watchwords. Sam Allardyce and Bolton epitomise this anti-football approach - effective, competentent, emotionally sterile. Anyone who watched the Blades v Watford saw modern football: 22 reasonably talented players, none of whom had any imagination in their play or the spark of thought to deviate from the pre-conceived game plans.

Football is essentially about "execution" of game plans and "delivery" or results. The more expensive players are more capable and the top teams deserve admiration, but they don't inspire affection. Management speak has taken the place of the inate passion that fuelled the game.

Off the pitch, the very structure that made the English game in particular embed itself within the fabric of society is being dismantled.

Mawhinney

From ivory towers, the League chairman, Mr Mawhinney and Gordon Taylor, PFA head, tell us that the financial state of clubs below the Premiership is ever improving.

Yet, in this past month alone, Bournemouth's chairman has indicated that without new investment, that club may fold. Swindon have requested more time to make the final payment under their CVA, which, if refused, could see them wound up. Huddersfield Town have suggested that their long-term future is in doubt, unless the terms of their lease of the Galpharm is renegotiated. Scarborough (as reported elsewhere) face extinction. Lancaster City are on the brink of closure. Crawley Town have defaulted on their CVA proposals. Our own club continues to stumble on, but no more than that.

More money is flowing into the game as ever before. But the proportion flowing down to the lower leagues is ever shrinking.

Higher placed clubs actively work with agents to depress the price of young players moving up the leagues. Billy Davies, a product of Crewe's youth academy, has rejected a new contract seemingly to ensure that he gets a move for a lower fee (and therefore higher wages). Crewe will always sell their players - it's their operating policy - but until now the players have worked with the club to ensure that everyone benefits. This seems no longer to be so (and see also Otsemobor and McIndoe).

Hoskins - Asset

Premier League clubs can now afford enormous squads. They take the best youth players from the youth teams of smaller clubs, denying those clubs the ability to build competitive squads and/or the prospect of selling players on. Most lower league youth teams are now comprised of rejects from higher placed set ups or players not likely to make the grade. The only saleable assets are those who only develop mentally and/or physically late (Hoskins, Williamson being two examples and, using the earlier example, Jones was a failed Liverpool youth). Meanwhile, long term loan deals develop a player for the owning club, whilst offering no more than a short term benefit to the loaning team.

Of course, once in the "big club" system, players have higher expectations of wages, which pushes up the operating costs of the clubs who take them on when they are released.

Meanwhile, the Premier League seeks to extract more cash for itself from the game. Recent reports in the Express suggest that the Premier League will break from the FA if the FA does not accede to its request to ensure more of the money for TV rights does directly to Premier League coffers. This may be exaggerated, but as more clubs at the top level get bought by overseas investors motivated by financial return rather than love of the club, the Premier League's "concern" for those below them in the league pyramid will only decline. Indeed, the next logical stage of the Premier League's operation will be to restrict promotion and relegation. As it becomes less and less possible to compete in the top division without significant outside investment, so the justification for allowing teams without that investment to come up, just to go down again, will diminish. But there's always a risk that a big name will end up relegated (Newcastle, say). If your aim is to ensure that you keep in the money club, it makes sense to eliminate that risk.

Football supporters are increasingly disenfranchised. Forced into all-seater stadia that most didn't want, priced out of attending matches, no longer sharing a bond with millionaire footballers whose lifestyles are more Hollywood Boulevard that Huish Park, they are forced into watching televised games and thereby contributing to the decline of the sport they watch.

In 10 years from now, what? A European Superleague played out for accountants to watch on pay-per-view as they slump on the sofa after work? An elite English (or British?) league, protected from relegation? 20 or 30 "League" teams, playing each other incessently for the right to beg admission to the top league? And a generation of kids, no longer intrigued or enticed by anything in the game other than success, playing Pro Evolution 29 on the PlayStationGameCubeWiXSensobox whilst a few die-hard 40 year olds have a last kickaround on the local rec before it's turned into new build housing?