The Premier League: boring, over-hyped, self-satisfied, predictable and often just quite simply bad
After a couple of weeks of Premier League action and three of the EFL, I’ve watched all of it and the thing that stands out is how exceptionally boring the top flight is and how much more entertaining the Championship is.
Is the Premier League bad? Definitely not all the time.
Liverpool played some entertaining football for a few minutes. Critics might wish to make out the elite is anything but. I understand that. But there’s plenty of talent in the league.
The problems are: a) it’s very predictable, you can correctly predict about 75 per cent of games – was there ever anything so predictable as City going one down but winning 4-1; b) play is sometimes great, but is often can’t-string-two-passes-together bad; c) tactics, having been elevated to an artform, just mean so many games are a stalemate as sides cancel each other out.
Take Brighton v Manchester United on Saturday. It was typical of so many games. After 25 minutes even the commentators had to say Brighton couldn’t put any passes together.
Their first goal was scored from a very unremarkable two yards. It got a bit better but not massively. I’d say almost all the players were a six or seven. They usually are.
In other words no one was amusingly bad, no one was thrillingly great. That’s the league all over, not bad, not great, just average. There is no brilliance and few howling errors. The Brighton game wasn’t bad, but at no point could you say, as the commentator did ‘It’s a great game now’. If Darren Fletcher really felt that, it symbolised how far expectations have fallen.
There was nothing great about it. Not elite entertainment. Not like it was.
It’s like seeing comedians at the Fringe. Twenty years ago you could see some really poor comics who were just bad at the artform, but occasionally you’d see someone who was brilliant with a real cutting edge. That rarely happens now.
Everyone is very professional and that kills so much passion and creativity. There are more stand-ups than ever but you rarely see a nine or 10, and never a three. It is as though they get to a functional, workable standard and don’t feel they have to get any better. They can make a living. Chances are not taken. Risks are avoided in case of failure.
Everyone is OK in the Premier League but some distance from producing the stellar product that’s marketed to us. A few incidents are fearlessly milked for excitement. VAR doesn’t make it any better, either, with its prissy interference of anything that excites. Determined, it seems, to neuter anything good, as the foolish, embarrassing farce at Bournemouth well-proved.
On the other hand, the Championship is more like the 1990s top flight. You see direct play, errors, skill and wild tackles. The best game I’ve seen so far, in terms of entertainment and there’s been a few, was Leeds’ 2-0 win at Hillsborough.
I hate to say it, because it sounds so old-mannish, but this is more like what football used to be like and why so many got so addicted. They played like it mattered, if only because success will enrich them.
In the Premier League there is no such agenda and no such feeling. For most, this is as good as it gets. Almost all teams haven’t a chance, not just of winning, but of even doing quite well.
Would you give everything in order to finish 11th, knowing you can’t finish higher unless something extraordinary happens? They’re all richer than Croesus, that must take away hunger. I genuinely believe, despite claims to the contrary, the players just don’t care that much. It may be subconscious. Given the circumstances, it would be understandable. Most are playing merely in order to preserve status and that’s too thin a gruel to survive on if you’re playing at 100 per cent.
Genius has been rejected in favour of consistency. We have an emulsified product. The true maverick will throw in a couple of fours, but once in a while will do something which will be talked about for a generation; but you have to tolerate those poor games, and that’s not allowed.
I also think that many players lack consistency of skill. In that Brighton game, passes from both sides were massively overhit. Free kicks were deliberated over forever, built up like this is going to be amazing, then they lamely hit into the wall, to widespread disappointment.
Did you see Ollie Watkins’ misses? And he’s one of the league’s best strikers. Terrible. That snoozefest was actually between two teams with prospects. Makes no difference. That’s the default standard.
Even Sky seemed disappointed. Another boring game … or ‘cagey’ if you want to overrate it, Redknapp-style. A few incidents were dressed up like it was 90 minutes of tense excitement. The first Arsenal goal was the product of good fortune rather than skill.
Trossard’s expressionless, hollow-eyed ‘celebration’ was trying to be cool but just came across like he didn’t care, which he probably didn’t. Not really. You can only fake so much. Joy is not one of them. The fact they were so delighted by their second showed they had no self awareness about the dross they had served up. But there was still time to launch one over the bar when it was easier to score. Dross.
It’s not wrong to want more. Standard things, such as a 25-yard shot, easily saved, are acclaimed as though this is the sort of brilliance that makes this the best league in the world. Christ, you should have seen it when it was good. Time and time again, there is premature ejaculation about a cross from a dead ball, only for it to be hit into a crowd of players and headed away, harmlessly.
It’s not all poor. Football is ornery and sometimes delivers joy even in the Premier League, it’s pointless to pretend otherwise, especially if one side throws their overthought, conservative approach aside. But genuinely it’s often not very good. Football in the EFL can be poor too, of course, but nowhere near as often, minute to minute.
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The Brighton game finished 2-1. United were desperately poor; if you didn’t know, you’d think they were a mid-tale third tier side. They only occasionally sparked into life and were defensively rancid, Brighton were not much better and won because of that appalling defending. There was very little tension.
I don’t want to be a miserable moaning old bastard, but this isn’t mere grumpiness, it’s an objective view of the league that self-identifies as wonderful. We shouldnt buy their propaganda and we should demand more for our big money.
If we consistently saw the sort of football we saw 25 years ago, broadcasters and fans would die of ecstasy, so used have we become to tedious mediocrity. That it’s painted as so superior, just makes it all the more laughable.