OVER THE past week we have been bemoaning the paucity of the SPL following the latest dire Old Firm derby. I think the coverage was over simplistic in that this was only one game and there had previously been plenty of good quality matches this season, many showing a decent level of skill as well as the usual impressive levels of endeavour.
I was at the Everton-Liverpool derby match a few days before and it was an even less entertaining spectacle than we witnessed at Parkhead. And that one was 120 minutes of torture because it went to extra time. Again there were very few chances, no
body seemed capable of anything imaginative and the fear of losing won over any other consideration.
It may well be that these were nothing more than typical tense derbies that are often poor games but there is also the possibility that the skill factor is decreasing, not only in the SPL but maybe in the English Premier League too. I recently spoke to a long-serving Premiership manager who told me that he felt this was the worst standard he had witnessed at the top level in England for a decade.
How could this be? Aren't the players paid tens of thousands of pounds every week and isn't this supposed to be the greatest league in the world? Certainly they tell us it is often enough. There is, however, a feeling that outside the top three or four teams there is a dependence on pace, and more particularly power, over and above skill and technique.
It could be viewed as a cyclical problem. Back in the late eighties and early nineties power play had a remarkable resurgence. Wimbledon with their strong-arm tactics and long ball game had won the FA Cup and others like Crystal Palace followed in their wake. England chose Graham Taylor as their national team manager, a proponent of the direct game he championed at Watford.
This dark era was finally consigned to the dustbin when the likes of Brazil, France and most recently Spain showed that the beautiful game can not only be a joy to watch, it can also be successful. The downside of art and craft in football is that it takes a long time to develop and managers, especially at the top level in England, do not get that time. It doesn't matter if you are former England captain Tony Adams, Manchester United one-time enforcer Paul Ince or Brazilian World Cup winner Luiz Felipe Scolari, club owners want success and they want it yesterday. If bosses know that this is the case it is sensible for them to do it through organisation, power and good old-fashioned hard graft, which doesn't take 10 years to hone.
So if you are Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger or, at a push, Rafa Benitez you can try to develop something which will take a little time. If you are anyone else you had better get success and you better get it quickly. The problem is that when you go too far down this road, good technique from other teams in less pressured leagues, that have been developing for years, suddenly have the upper hand.
This season's UEFA Cup has been the best example of this. If England's top league is so far ahead why are the last three teams left standing already struggling to reach the last 16? We all know that Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal regularly reach the latter stages in the Champions League, but below them the drop off is catastrophic.
Everton and Portsmouth fell by the wayside very early on and now both Spurs and Aston Villa look highly unlikely to progress, while Manchester City with their first leg away draw in Copenhagen look to be the only likely survivors in the competition. It is a confusing paradox that English clubs kick and scrap their way for an entire season to reach the Nirvana of European football only to decide it is of secondary, if not tertiary, importance when they finally get there.
Three quarters of the English Premier League managers are worried about relegation because the league is so tight and, as such, they have little or no interest in such high-minded concepts as style, skill or entertainment value. Even the worthy concept of chasing European glory sounds laughable when you consider the reserve team sent out by Harry Redknapp in Ukraine on Thursday night.
The accepted wisdom is that the business is more important; Premiership survival trumps European triumph. For the clubs and their accountants that is definitely the case, but it isn't the case for the fans. Will any supporter look back in 10 years and say: "That was the year we finished 14th in the league, wasn't that a memorable season?" I doubt it, but ask any fan whose team has won any European trophy, what year did you win it? I bet they will return the answer quicker than Andy Murray would return an underhand serve.
So Harry Redknapp might be able to confidently claim that it was only his reserves that were well beaten in the Ukraine. However, I am not sure his first 11 would have fared any better. The battle to stave off relegation has sapped the energies of all those involved, but there is a good argument to suggest that for all its excitement it is also draining the quality because of the climate of fear.
This is where the correlation with the SPL comes into sharp focus again. Because of the small size of our league, it is not uncommon in any season for two-thirds of our teams to be looking over their shoulders rather than aiming for the odd European place available, with Celtic and Rangers guaranteed the first two spots year in year out. Fear of relegation is the enemy of attacking, open and entertaining football.
One area where the two leagues differ remarkably, however, is in self-promotion. While the English continue to over sell their wheezing game as the best on the planet, after a couple of bland Old firm games we are telling the world that ours should come with a government health warning.
The full article contains 1052 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
