SoccerShout

Quality vs Excitement

This season’s Premier League is turning out to be the most exciting for a long, long time. It’s also the lowest quality display, among the front-runners, that I can remember.

Arsenal were inconsistent pushovers for the first few months. You can’t say Man Utd are strong in either attack, midfield, or defence. Chelsea looked invincible for a good while but have been stuck in second gear since Christmas.

Don’t get me wrong – relatively-speaking they’re better than the rest and deserve to be at the top. But you get the feeling that the league-winning side from any of the past 10 years would wipe the floor with this lot.

And yet…this season has been a real vintage. I’ve watched more games than I have for ages, as anyone can beat anyone.

Will the Premier League’s administrators learn anything from this. Say, that a closer level of team ability leads to better entgertainment? I shan’t be holding my breath.

They’re more likely to claim that their hands-off policy of letting market-force dictate is working. But that isn’t what is going on here. The rich teams are just having a bad year. Next year one of them will get their act together and win the league by 15 points and only lose once in the process.

But I won’t be watching.