Arsenal ‘risk-averse meat-grinder-style’ will be default in fun-free Premier League

Saturday’s Guardian told us that the Premier League’s sporting directors have held talks about the ubiquity of set-piece goals and holding in the penalty area, amid concerns these trends are damaging the spectacle with set-pieces accounting for 27.1% of Premier League goals.

They won’t address the elephant in the room though; that this is all their own greedy fault.

The pursuit of riches means every layer of top-flight football is now so well remunerated that clubs will play any way that gets them results, gets them a place higher in the Premier League prize money table and a few million better off. You hear it relentlessly that result not performance matters most. ‘Getting over the line’ matters more than anything. It’s now an unquestioned default and even seen as admirable, as if you’d be mad to want anything different, ignorant of the fact that most observers are not fans of either team and are watching to actually be entertained. But entertainment is barely considered.

Whether it’s winning or just surviving in the Premier League, everyone sucks from the same money nipple; high transfer fees, high wages, ever greater resources than anyone else in Europe, are all dependent on that luscious TV money. I mean what would you do? Sustain your position by playing the most efficient, boring, brutal football with a better chance of winning thus keeping the club in the money or play exciting, expansive but risky football?

So by making the league a financial behemoth, the league has eventually shat its own nest. They’ll tinker around the edges by timing throw-ins and how long it takes to take a corner but it’ll make no difference because, as they very well know, only the money matters and the desire for money trumps everything else.

But what to do when football becomes too unexciting to pay subscriptions for the neutral (who are the majority) to watch, that the revenue from TV contracts decreases? You’ve sown the seeds of your own decline. Messing about with the rules and trying to make VAR relevant by bending the game to its will, won’t fix the underlying philosophy because as a way of playing, it works. Why wouldn’t you crowd the six-yard box or play for corners and throw-ins when you can score more easily and thus earn more money?

READ: Why modern football is sh*t: wrestling, conspiracies and VAR – the crowning turd in the bowl

If it didn’t financially reward teams to such an extent, there’d be less to lose by playing exciting football, which is why European football is often far more fun, why all levels of Scottish football are often more entertaining and why – if you watch England’s women play – it’s consistently entertaining in a way the Premier League rarely is. The Premier League is the stupid, ugly relation who thinks they’re clever and good-looking.

I’m in the process of moving house and have to seriously consider if it’s worth paying to watch the Premier League next season in the new place. When the title winners are so eyeball-meltingly awful to watch and most games are likewise, what’s the point? Football is consistently better absolutely everywhere else. Just pointing to a few examples that contradict the trend is just fooling yourself and being loyal to a business that abuses you. The hype is massive but the reality is modest at best.

We’re having the pish taken out of us, paying ever more for ever less entertainment. It’s not just the set plays and wrestling, it’s the sickening amount of play-acting and cheating on a micro and macro level. And don’t even mention the joy killer that is VAR.

In a sense we’re all to blame for this state of affairs because we’ve created the demand and given them reason to believe the broadcasting rights are very valuable. But our wishes, especially on VAR, are wholly and totally ignored by a game which thinks it knows better than its customers. In my experience of running my own business since 1985, telling your customers they’re wrong and ignoring their wishes is a good way to alienate them and ruin your business. That’s where we are.

But who’ll be the first to reject the move away from the risk-averse meat-grinder-style that Arsenal and others now frequently deploy? I mean, they’re winning the league playing it. No-one will jump first but I’m sure they all know they’re devaluing their ‘product’ if they keep going this way. They’re just banking on a marketing mind wipe so we don’t believe our own eyes.

If I’d seen zero Premier League this season and more German and Italian games, would I have been worse off? I don’t think so. You might think this is an exaggeration but watch any European football and you’ll see what football used to be like here even 10 or 20 years ago and how watery, to the point of pathetic, it is compared to 35 years ago.

Cup football, given its knockout nature and the fact that it’s worth much less money, is not seen as anywhere near as important. The pressure is off and teams play with more freedom because there’s almost nothing to lose. That’s why Pep was so animated in Newcastle and clearly enjoying it more than usual. The football doesn’t have to be risk averse.

If a Premier League team enters at the third round and wins every match up to the semi-final, they would have earned roughly £964,000 in prize money alone by the time they reach the quarter-final stage. The League Cup is even more paltry, being worth a cumulative amount of under £240,000, even if you win it. When you consider Arsenal’s wage bill is £364million per annum, it puts it in perspective. The cups are worthless to these money-hoovers, so they don’t mind losing.

What will they do? The idea that the way to justify the ever-growing TV deals is by being attractive and entertaining doesn’t seem to have occurred to them, or even that paying to be entertained is a well established concept. Maybe they think it’s already entertaining but I suspect few believe that. The result is seen as everything, the performance very much second. Perhaps they’re living off the marketing success of their ‘best league in the world’ propaganda and think the good times and the six-figure salaries will last forever.

If Arsenal win and become the poster boys for the success of this negative mindset, it will seal it as the best way to make the most money and ever more people will turn off their TV and find something better to do. The lure of that money is strong, so I assume they’ll do nothing.

Indeed, what can they do without accepting the economic architecture of the league is the real problem? Frankly, that’s about as likely to happen as Spurs winning the Premier League.