Obsidian Beast
Central Defender
I think the fundamental problem is the Premier League. Sides that had enough success at its start managed to keep afloat and maintain dominance. Pretty much every other major side that was in the top flight has completely crumbled under the financial pressure of trying to keep up. You can not make sensible decisions about finance when you are forced to spend over what you can realistically get in income in order to try and get a toehold on the big money. If there are 40 or so clubs making financial commitments that are dependent on long term top end of the Premier League levels of success to balance the books, you are going to end up with the majority of sides have serious problems.
If you look at the first Premier League league table, you have tonnes of examples of sides that have tried to keep up with the Premier levels of spending in the vain hope of getting stability, both in performances and in finances, and ended up having long periods greatly diminished as a club. From that first season Aston Villa, Norwich, Blackburn, QPR, Sheffield Wednesday, Wimbledon (arguably a few more reasons with them!), Sheffield United, Ipswich, Leeds, Middlesborough and Forest have all gone through that process of overspending at a level dependent of top level success in order to survive, and they have all crumbled. In the case of Blackburn and Leeds they actually had the top level success, and they still eventually succumbed to the reality of the spending levels they needed to achieve that eventually crushing them. The guts were ripped out of football when these sides were reduced to limping along in the lower division.
The Premier League introduced the concept where finishing in the bottom half of the league could be a financial disaster. The Premier League introduced the concept where finishing outside of winning the league could be a sackable offence. The Premier League made the stakes so high that eventually the exciting football we saw in early years was replaced by dreary play-it-safe, stop the other side playing style football championed by the likes of Mourino. The Premier League cemented certain sides at the top of the table. The Premier League destroyed top flight football in the Midlands and reduced football in the North East to one favoured team. The Premier League brought a huge bias to teams from Liverpool, Manchester and London, yet crushed all of the slightly less fashionable teams in those areas, like Tranmere and Orient. The Premier League saw the top sides bankrolled by oligarchs in order to achieve dominance. The Premier League saw players brought in just to stop them being in other sides in other leagues in Europe, and has resulted in making most European leagues rubbish. The Premier League saw ticket prices go through the roof, merchandising going into overdrive, it started the trend of moving sport away from free-to-air, it saw football brands seriously start to overtake local football loyalties and allegiances.
For all of the exciting football it brought in the first few years, the Premier League has been disaster for the game. Football is now a whore to corporate bodies that milk it for all it is worth and do not give a monkey's that the 'product' is woeful over marketed tripe.
Excellent post. Hard to argue with much of your analysis tbh.