The recent Manchester City debacle has prompted me to look into my past thoughts on the game. Below is a short excerpt from “101 Things That Get Our Goat About Football” which was published in 2012. Has the game changed?

…... It’s a shame that today’s parents don’t have my dinosaur ideas about parenting as the world might just be a better place and children might grow up to respect authority instead of flaunting the weaknesses of society. Pundits, media, players and managers all bleat on about the game becoming bigger and better but is it? Science requires methods of measuring and recording changes but how does this occur in football? Is it all about the money in the game that makes them come to their conclusions? The way things are going, I often wonder if we would be better going back to amateur status and starting the whole thing again.

The game is expanding like an army which can’t feed itself. The game has made many improvements with some superb innovations like the television coverage to the actual product on view on the pitch. Training and coaching has also become more professional and it must be admitted that players themselves are better prepared but at what cost? What happened to the home internationals and the England team in general? It seems that those things have gone backwards. My biggest fear is that the out of control finances in the game, or more correctly the business, will not be sustainable. Fans cannot keep up with increasing ticket and merchandising prices to fuel the astronomical wages that the clubs pay. When will we run out of ‘sugar daddies’ and what will be the consequences?

Some Premiership teams are currently over £500 million in debt. What other business would be allowed to continue with such an appalling debt? It is sickening really and it makes me mad that the greedy players and agents keep wanting more. Eventually the well will run dry. The number of clubs that win things is getting fewer and fewer and isn’t that what the game is supposed to be about? If it was just for entertainment purposes we might as well send all the players to Billy Smart’s Circus and then they wouldn’t need to play winning effective football. Maybe the supporters would be better off going to the circus as they could then mingle with similar minded clowns and it would cost them less. If a stop is not put to the insane route that the game is travelling, the clubs will never get back to living within their means and the beautiful game will die. Maybe that’s what needs to happen for the long term good of the game and we can start at basics again.