The Game I Love Has Been Taken From Me

It's living on past glories and been in terminal decline regarding supporter numbers for decades; as entertainment, it is utter shite. You never used to see gaps at Old Trafford but you do now and the failure of Man City to develop an equivalent fan base despite their incredible success is another indicator.

Yes, clubs declare capacity crowds based on season ticket sales but the grounds certainly aren't full. The numbers for the new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock have been set in the low 50k region for good reason – we've lost so many supporters it's doubtful we will fill that regularly after the novelty of the first season.

Bring back Covid — it was great without footy.

If the Saudi League takes off, it may be able to coax some top players in their prime to forego Man City, Liverpool etc by paying more than they can.

Presumably even if City's oil sheikhs can match Saudi cash, the FFP rules would prevent them doing so. Which would be quite ironic

We've grown so old but it's the game's fault... all that VAR, complicated offsides... handball... don't even get me started.

But when Everton run out onto that pitch... it doesn't matter... I believe again.

I've done it for 50+ years... I've no problem for doing it 50+ more.

We, Everton... with help... did it!

We are those nameless ones Charlton Heston rails against, we helped to topple that Statue of Liberty into the sand.

Now the Sky 6 apes are ruling the world.

Damn you all to hell.

When the Sky 6 teams threatened to leave the League when the lure of more money became a reality with the Super League, what do the fourteen other clubs do!? ...shit themselves!!!

Sadly, they should've had a secret meeting threatening to turf the greedy six out once and for all... no mercy, no reprives, gone... and fucking forgotten.

We could've been part of a total rethink of the game we love, a strong voice to reshape the Premier League, its rules, laws and most important of all, its fans... general fairness across the board regarding FFP, proper ownership and general running of clubs.

Even new TV times allowing travelling fans to get to games and even breaking the fucking daft ruling on not allowing legal access to 3 pm live games on Saturdays.

As we all know, that ship has sadly sailed now and the Greedy 6 are still laughing at us... especially Man City!

What changed was the relative wealth, as with the rest of our society, has become a huge problem with a few clubs able to utilise the wealth of nations. There just aren't enough multi-billionaires to go around.

Why bang on about Sky? They are just exploiting a situation, not actually engineering anything. There is no reason restricting the number of successful clubs would actually be better for them. They just want subscribers.

Barry R thinks gaps in the stands is a sure sign the fans are rejecting what's on offer, but surely you can't do that unless you've properly eliminated cost of living and quasi-legal streaming giving an easy stay-at-home alternative for less dedicated fans from the mix of possibilities?

Si (#7) also makes a valid point about our previous benefactors. But I would counter by saying John Moores was a keen club supporter who put money in, as was Bob Lord at Burnley, Doug Ellis at Villa. These were keen supporters of the game, whereas the Top 6 companies and private equity investors we have now are clearly not.

A little surprised Barry didn't mention that these Top 6 are headed by well capitalised corporations, all of them foreign apart from Spurs. If someone could explain to me how these Middle East, or worse USA-based companies have the interests of British football at heart, I would like to hear it.

These countries have no background in our sport, but they are both rich. Their interest is purely financial, and the Premier League assists them because they too are only interested in matters financial.

Government Controller is the only chance we have. In my old days, Burnley won the League with a stack of great international players, Ipswich won it also and were relegated the next season. Not sure we could ever reach heights like that again.

Introduce big money into sport, it's the end of the sport. What you then have is business. Money corrupts. Big money corrupts absolutely.

The empty seats argument is weak if you look back at attendances in the '80s. In fact, something worse has happened: fans of other clubs have adapted to supporting their own club as well as watching the Top Six.

Just look at the thread on Premier League games on ToffeeWeb each week. People celebrating goals for Man City, jeering at Liverpool and Man Utd.

They've developed emotional attachments to the elite. It's kind of like watching your kid's school play cause of an obligation then going to the West End.

I can remember the shock that was caused by Accrington Stanley leaving the Football League while Bury hardly reached the same levels.

Was Abramovich the first or did that come with Jack Walker(?) at Blackburn Rovers? Haven't Everton been there since the days of outrageous £6,000 transfers from Scotland?

European competition aside, it's nothing new except for P&S regulations and would their removal make all clubs equally attractive to investors?

Somehow, I doubt it…

Of course many left at the end. Some as they like to get away and ahead of the crowd, others through frustration.

Just over 13,000 at what I still consider our darkest hour in December 1983.

I know they where different times but even our glorious 84-85 season, I think we hovered around 28,000 in a stadium that, at the time held 50,000 plus. I haven't checked so maybe a more savvy statistic can correct me.

Now we sell out every week. It's difficult to get a ticket and away matches are almost sold out before they are announced.

We have a waiting list for season tickets.

They sell out, both match day and season tickets, but I would be interested to see the actual attendance.

The seventies and eighties were an awful time to watch football with widespread hooliganism. I lived on Walton Hall Avenue in the '70s and walked through Priory Road in the '80s – you had to have your wits about you just to stay safe getting to the game. And let's not mention away games.

The advent of all all-seater stadiums and the Premier League sanitised all that and helped the game regain its popularity. I certainly wouldn't have taken my kids to the game before it.

However, it certainly is time for a complete reset. Having six sides pull up the drawbridge after massive investment is anti-competitive and will ultimately kill the game.

On the subject of attendances in the '80s, there was unprecedented unemployment and hardship at the time which made it impossible for many to consider paying to watch football. Add to that the hooliganism and the fact that there was large scale fiddling of attendance figures to avoid VAT (no automatic turnstile counters then), it's little wonder that spectator numbers were down.

We averaged 32,725 in our title winning 84-85 season (up from 19,343 in 83-84 when we won the FA Cup). Liverpool and Man Utd were only in the upper 30,000s then too, if I remember rightly.

I remember teams like Bilbao or Sampdoria being in the European Cup. Now, the English League is unique in that it has six or possibly seven very wealthy clubs. Most have only two or at most three top clubs.

The European Super League was a blatant attempt to make sure the top European clubs never lost their place at the banquet.

Most fans in these countries have a local ('heritage' I think the experts call them) team and a big team. A relative of mine by marriage supports Ayr United and Rangers and when I go to Murcia people there support their local team, often Valencia or Real Murcia and one of the big two in Spain.

Everton under the Grantchesters got off the bus, and as this article tells us, it's near impossible to get back on.

Let's be honest, Man City, Liverpool, Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal belong in a completely different league to the likes of us and West Ham. Spurs are on the border, as they never actually win anything, but I'd be happy to go back to an old "First Division" without the five clubs mentioned.

I'll tune in every now and then to see how the European Super League goes, but my main focus will be on us, Newcastle, Villa, Brighton, Notts Forest, West Ham and other clubs with a great history and a massive local fan base in a competitive, high-quality professional English First Division. We'd still sell out every game.

The ground would be packed and the tannoy would announce '42,000, thank you' and the ground held 75,000!

In my post @11, I mention us and the Sheikhs at Man City. Ayr and Rangers are a bit similar in a way.

If you remember, in the '80s, David Murray of MIM wanted to buy Ayr and transform the Club. The board – average age 108 – knocked him back. I think they didn't want him selling the pies and Bovril from a covered stand.

Anyway, Murray took his money, bought Rangers instead for £6 million and transformed Scottish football. Souness, Laudrup, Gascoigne, Gary and Trevor from us.

He forced Celtic and other Scottish Clubs to look outward and pay the going rate.

To be fair, in the '80s, the stands were quite often not fully occupied because only a few could afford the extra expense. We all experienced the doubling up at the turnstiles and kids “going over the top”.

I remember my dad saying "The place is full, how would you get another 35,000 in here?" It was laughable!

It's no surprise therefore that, after 32 years, that's what we have. Everton's problem was backing itself to remain in the Top 5, getting it wrong and, when it mattered, then finding itself nowhere near its previous position.

No point blaming anyone for that, we backed ourselves in 1992 to stay a big club but, let's face it, we've never come close since.

The way younger generations consume everything has changed, football is no different, I think Sky and the Premier League are just a reflection of those interests.

When I went in Neanderthal times, it was massively local with passionate fans there to support come what may. The vitriol and one-upmanship of who can hate players and management the most was not a thing, in fact, ripping into Everton personnel as per today was tantamount to treason.

Tourists and people on a jolly were a tiny minority back then but now it seems the reverse is true. The Brentford manager is voicing astonishment that some fans were booing when Chelsea went one up against them – it's a shite game these days for many reasons but a contributory factor is bellend fans.

It's over for the "legacy" fan, unless you are happy to watch the same handful of clubs take it in turns to dominate the trophies and Champions League places ad infinitum, while your own club yo-yos between trying to avoid relegation and scrabbling for the crumbs left on the table when the Sky 6 have had their fill of the cake.

1. Sky fail, a better distribution of monies in the leagues, independent regulation etc, less money, less viewing, the wheels come off the cart. Will it happen anytime soon? Nope.

2. The Premier League will form its own super league, with or without foreign clubs, with a second tier (domestic) Premier League 2... can't wait.

Frankly, the only reason the Premier League was so against the Super League originally,was because they didn't think of it first. Cue agreement with EFL for another 6 clubs to join Premier League 2.

The Premier League is the European Champions League, follow the money guys, it's going to happen.

You give us plenty to think about with the changes you would like to see made that would benefit all clubs, especially those in all the lower leagues.

Speaking for myself purely as an Everton fan, I've seen a vast change following the club, firstly just after the Second World War as a mostly struggling First Division club, then a Second Division club, winning promotion, then more struggling until John Moore's took over.

He gave us interest-free loans which helped us climb to the very top of the English game and proved that money helps but definitely not as much as clubs are helped today.

Money can help but also ruin the same game with it buying the power to control the way the game is run. Money now controls football and those who run it and gives power to the players who earn it and can dictate how the club and their managers play the game.

At the moment, selfishly or not, I am only interested in how Everton FC are treated by these self-interested Premier League officials and we are being treated in a different and unfair way to the top level clubs in the same league.

That should satisfy football authorities that an owner and club can be solvent and sustainable.

A more even distribution of the TV money (including more of it cascading down to the lower divisions) also appeals. At the recent hearing, Rick Parry explained that the other divisions are entirely dependent on what the Premier League decides to give them.

Plainly a regulator is required to take steps to improve competitiveness.

The Premier League doesn't actually need match-going fans. The modern game is made for TV advertising and armchair telly clappers. (No offence meant to fans that can't get to the game…)

The money is from TV, not the turnstile. I think that's where we will struggle even at a new stadium. We have the highest percentage of season ticket holders in the league. Most of which just go to the game without buying a drink or a programme.

Other clubs purposely restrict season tickets and prioritise the one-off day tripper who will pay top money for a ticket and buy as much merchandise as possible.

VAR has certainly made going the match a worse experience for all… but, for the TV viewers, it's another talking point.

Rearranging games at short notice is another TV enhancement but another 2 fingers up to the fans.

I dislike quite a lot about the modern game, the diving, cheating the ref, the abuse the 4th official gets, the overhype of every TV game, the talking heads talking for the sake of it and very selective TV coverage of the media darlings.

I do love the tactics, pace of the game and technical skills of the modern game. I think it's the highest standard of football ever played. The Champions League has overtaken the World Cup and Euros as the premier football competition.

Things I would like to change:

Time limits for players taking goal kicks, throw-ins, corners and keeper possession.

Physios being allowed on the pitch whilst the game is going on.

Reduce the amounts of subs.

Transparent way of monitoring added time, display it on the scoreboard or TV so we all know what's going on.

VAR will never be abandoned so I would bring in 1 appeal per team rather than everything being checked for every goal. Audio broadcast to the stadium for VAR decisions.

Anything level being onside to actually see more goals.

PSR would be abandoned. I would replace it with a reverse recruitment system where the team topping the league can only bring in 1 player whilst the team at the bottom can bring in multiple.

That's my starter for 10.

The game has evolved, but not all of the evolution, particularly post-Sky, has been an improvement. Everton lost their way in the late '80s and even more so when Johnson and Kenwright ruled the roost.

Moshiri came in too late, but his decisions have been appalling, especially when one considers he's an international businessman and an accountant to boot.

Nostalgia leads me back again and again to Young and Vernon and then the Holy Trinity. I was lucky to see those glory days and the renaissance under Kendall in the '80s.

But Barry is totally right: that kind of club and that kind of local allegiance has gone. Football is global, Liverpool has as many fans in Stavanger and Tokyo or even Durban where I attended a cricket 20 - 20 international and counted 17 Liverpool shirts on the evening.

We used to ask: "Who's your second club?" and many Evertonians in the '50s might have said Liverpool; my first trip to Wembley was in '65 to see Liverpool v Leeds Utd with my red supporting relatives. (Norman Low was an uncle so a ticket wasn't too hard to come by.)

Two of those relatives were with me a year later for the Derek Temple FA Cup Final. Now Liverpool are referred to as the Redshite and we hate them and vice versa.

The world has changed and not just money rules, which it has in all honesty since the maximum wage was abolished, but absolute mega money rules.

Liverpool, Blackburn and Leicester have each won the Premier League once; otherwise four clubs have dominated it for the last 30+ years.

Most kids support one of those four teams, not just in the area, not just in the country, but globally. Yes, my game has gone and it won't come back, I'm afraid.

Incidentally, between 1959 and 1971, the following clubs won the First Division:

Wolves, Burnley, Tottenham, Ipswich, Everton, Liverpool, Man Utd, Liverpool, Man Utd, Man City, Leeds Utd, Everton and Arsenal — quite a contrast to the last 30-odd years.

Greed, play acting, cheating, corruption.

Media bias to the pricks across the park is another.

The love for the game is nearly hate.

It'll be more hate and cancelled subscriptions when Everton are punished further and the pricks win the league (which they will).

Bring back '90s football. We were shite, but the entertainment was there.

Spurs and Chelsea, for example, are two (big) clubs that we had pretty much always been bigger than. They were just lucky enough to have got good at the right time – and fair fucks to them btw. But even they can't realistically close the gap on Arsenal, Liverpool or Man City any time soon even if they were inclined to spend the money.

For me, football now holds none of the excitement it did even 5 years ago. The Premier League is in serious danger of eating itself IMHO. If fans like me (44 years old, had a season ticket for about 30 to 35 of those years) is getting disillusioned with it all, then they have serious problems.

I started watching football in the late seventies and by the early eighties, the crowds were not always big but the buzz of being in a crowd, the singing, the rivalry and the way that games played out on muddy pitches made the sport brilliant to watch.

Yes, there were problems, but mostly the bad behaviour of some fans was reflecting the society of the time. Naturally, times changed, but for me mostly all the buzz has been sanitised.

When it was decided that football was part of the ‘entertainment' industry, it lost its way. Thumping music playing in stadiums, meddling with the rules, and giant foam hands and plastic flags have ruined match days for me.

Modern players are great athletes, but not many are great footballers. But the spoonfeeding of the media keeps a gravy train on the tracks which sells seats.

But, for all the reasons in the article, it's really not that great anymore for the ordinary fans. To pay hundreds of pounds for a ticket to watch two teams passing a ball around, rarely shooting at goal, and the referee and the VAR effectively deciding the result is just nuts.

It's not about preferring it when we were winning, it's just the modern game isn't that good. As a customer, I'm lost to the elite game already. I'll love Everton still but I'll watch non-league.

A fan in China paying his TV subscription is more valuable to the Premier League than a fan who goes the match, because its new money, they don't care if Stamford bridge is half empty for a Champions League game, they still draw a TV audience.

They want the rich teams playing in the big games, for the big audience, for their massive sponsorship that's it!

Do they want Brighton - Aston Villa on the last day, fighting for 4th? Or Spurs - Man Utd?

The very thing that made the league so big and a spectacle was the competitive nature of it; that's gone, every now and then, we will get someone like Villa crashing the Top 4 but Man Utd will just spend £500M again, Spurs will splash the cash and Villa will probably sell their prized players.

An equal playing field, equal transfer budget, would be the only way to equalise the massive differences now, and that's never going to happen.

Mitoma, Evan Ferguson, Neto, Palhinha, Olise, Eze, Toney, Garner, Onana, Branthwaite, Gibbs-White, Barkley, Solanke

And who will buy them? The Big Six or Seven.

Is it any wonder the poorer teams cannot compete?

Also, I read that Leicester, should they come up, will have to sell players to comply with Premier League P&S rules!

Great stuff, if you enjoy fish in a barrel being shot. Despite the fact we need Sheffield Utd to go down, I feel sorry for the Blades fans, we had a great weekend amongst them at the start of the season.

I really should not have switched it on.

I for one would love to see the PL impose a hard salary cap, living in Toronto I follow the major North American sports leagues and the salary cap system works, especially in tandem with the draft model. You just don't see dynasties like the late 70s/early 80s Islanders and Steelers winning 4 in a row anymore. To even win (say) 2 out of 3 you need a generational talent like Brady, Mahomes, Crosby, Jordan etc. The playoff format to win trophies also has a lot to do with this, but the cap system (especially a hard cap) keeps the playing field a lot closer to level than the PL will ever be. By my quick googling and maths:

17 different teams have won the Stanley Cup since 1992 (over half the number of teams in the NHL)

17 different teams have won the Super Bowl (again, over half)

13 different teams have won NBA titles (almost half, and the NBA has a soft cap)

17 different teams have won the World Series (again over half, and again a soft cap)

In the same period 7 teams have won the PL, including Blackburn who got in before the dominance was really established, and Leicester who were a once in a century fairy tale. It's basically a closed shop barring another Leicester type miracle.

Granted, the relatively few number of games played in the PL is a factor, and as previously stated so are the draft system and playoff models. But a salary cap wouldn't hurt in making the league more competitive. If nothing else, it would prevent the big 5 + Spurs from having better players on their bench every week than most of the other 14 cannon fodder teams could ever dream of. Would also help enforce fiscal responsibility on teams with clueless boardroom leadership. Bring it on.

Financial Fair Play or Profitability and Sustainability levels, my arse, especially because the Champions League gravy train is 99% reserved for the special few because of these rules.

The biggest argument (imo) between Rick Parry and Masters, at the latest enquiry, was about parachute payments. Masters wanted these because he wanted to keep the Premier League competitive (this season's three promoted clubs, are light years behind, although Luton got a second wind when Everton were given that draconian points deduction) whilst Parry, didn't want them because he felt it was giving the relegated clubs an unfair advantage in the Championship.

Parry wanted to distribute the wealth to everyone, because he believed this was better and also much fairer, but the Premier League don't seem to be interested in doing such a thing and much prefer to keep a closed shop with regard to the Champions League places.

When introduced, it sounded like a good concept.

All it seems to have done is cement the pseudo Super League and prevent others from breaking into the club.

Get them (Premier League) properly regulated and held accountable outside of their cigar-smoking self-appreciating club.

One of your favourite singers sang “Those who are first will later be last” — That doesn't apply to the Premier League in its present form… more like those who are first will stay there.

Will the fans of the “also-rans” continue to watch this very poor handicap race?

Fans are a major component of what all the foregoing pay their money for. During Covid, televised football without fans was dead in the water, lifeless soulless training games.

Every Sky advert sells passion; without it, the cash cow is dead. For me, the best moment at Saturday's game was the crowd's reaction to Beto's goal and Beto's reaction to the crowd. Without this, the Premier League have no product.

Football cannot survive without match-going fans and it gives the supporters tremendous power. Unfortunately, it is an unusable weapon. We are customers who invest emotionally and we are treated with contempt because of it.

A genuine one-day boycott of premier league football would shake the sport to its foundations, but it could never happen. We don't invest in football, we invest in Everton. We are major performers in the biggest sporting product in history and our reward is to be treated like shit.

After reading your post, Dave, I read Andy's, and together they really resonated with the militant mind I have always possessed!

Seriously, I've been saying it for years, and believe that fundamental misjudgment is actually caused by people who can't see past a pound note. A lot of things about modern day football are rotten to the core but maybe it's always been this way and I've never seen it before!

I could see them continually churning the bottom half of the league to invite new fashionable teams as they dump others out. It might end up like the WWF where the outcome is known but the fans want to see the play acted out. Does anyone watch the stars of the Saudi League? No one who is serious about football.

I see David 35, also pointed that out. Good stuff both of you.

The problem is that, as fans, we don't own the club and consequently have very little, if any, say in how they are run; until the ownership model fundamentally changes, then nothing else will change.

The only reason that ownership and fans interests align is because we all want success on the pitch but there the mutual interest stops. The owner wants success as it enhances the value of his or her investment, whereas the fan wants the same thing but for entirely different motives, it makes us feel good for the week, we feel that we are part of something, almost family.

So believing that in some way we can persuade Boehly, Louis, Kronke, Mansour, Henry, Glazer and maybe Staveley to voluntarily surrender income is entirely delusional. This to a certain extent is understandable as they own these companies (because that is all they are to these people). They are in it for long-term capital gain, they are neither altruistic nor philanthropic and indeed why should they be?

It's like believing that, if Sayer's were in trouble financially Gregg's would come along and give up a bit of the sausage roll market – it just isn't going to happen.

And I know the Premier League has more money than them but give the game back to the fans.

Too much diving, too many sliding tackles and a bunch of useless mercenaries who are taking more money but providing less of a product.

Where's our Arteta and Cahill? Where is Arsenal's Henry and Bergkamp? Where's the new Drogba? Where is the new Zidane? Ronaldo (real and not real)?

All you get is more charlatans not prepared to do the work, only there to get their wages.

Football is no longer fun to watch as there are no mavericks. I mean where's the Carbone or di Canio? Times when every club had at least one amazing player like Jay-Jay Okocha.

Football now has the worst value for money quotient than ever in history. Price out the hooligans so you can sit and calmly watch multi-millionaires go through the motions.

I stopped going to games years ago, I am in the process of signing off from all this shit via TV. But we're spending millions on a new stadium to watch this shite.

I'm certainly not the only one who thinks like this, having a look in the stands recently, mostly people are old. What happens when the old guard die?

I did also like watching Cantona strutt his stuff, the guy had so much presence. But correct – football is sterile now, just too many multi-millionaires, and a ridiculous media that fawn over the chosen teams.

Currently, and forever going forward, it's a boring snore fest and they have become so embroiled in the “product” that Sky and the Premier League are absolutely killing the sport they believe they invented!

Good luck to them... the game (that we all grew up with, and loved) is over.