Perez says that the SL “will save football”. So how come the key organisations of FIFA and UEFA have not been involved in the discussions? He says that there are too many matches of poor quality. Well, if you have wall-to-wall televised games many of those will be poor quality, but please define “quality” and what determines its quality? Are players any more skilful now that they were 5, 10. 20, 50 years ago? Is the quality of the Premier league higher due to the import of so many international players and managers? And let’s not confuse quality with entertainment. Arsenal haven’t been entertaining for many a year and the England team are 4th in the world rankings and yet few of their games have been entertaining – perhaps we should only play Belgium, France and Brazil?
The new league will be bad for football. They cannot be allowed to play in their own SL while also playing in the domestic league. And will they play in the League Cup and FA Cup? Earlier this season, when we were willing against Orient, how many of us were relishing the next opponent being Spurs. When we got into the 3rd round of the FA Cup, how many of us wanted the big draw – we got a Premier League team, but what a disappointment! Why did we take so many to Anfield or to the Emirates a few seasons back? The reason is that those clubs have a heritage. Sunderland are not the “best” team in League One, but we get more satisfaction from beating them that we would Posh, because of Sunderland’s heritage.
A football team is not like other businesses. These owners not understand that they are mere custodians of the club; there will be no one at the club now that were around when many started supporting their club. and there should be many that are supporting the club when the owners have long gone. With the creation of the SL, these owners are creating something that is could be interesting, a bit like the new cricket 100 league - it certainly ain’t football.