Money still rules but Premier League in danger of becoming democratic

The first 10 years of the 20th century saw professional football fully established in Britain as a mass spectator sport. The opening decade of the 21st has confirmed the game's hold on the attention worldwide with the leading multinational teams from England household names in millions of foreign homes. Thanks to satellite television a mud hut in Mauritius can bear the legend "MUFC rule!". Yet if the way football is broadcast continues to advance, the modern game itself does not change much. Barcelona have been making late claims to be regarded as the team of the decade, and are indeed playing the stuff that dreams are made of, but in evolutionary terms are little more than the Ajax of the early 1970s with a bit of extra pace. Spain, who are largely Barça in national costume, have distinguished an otherwise mundane international scene but are hardly Pelé's Brazil revisited. In England people can watch games in conditions of safety and comfort which were unimaginable in the 1900s and still rare before the 1990s. Playing standards in the Premier League remain high. It is now taken for granted that players will control a ball from almost any height or angle at a touch while regularly beating goalkeepers from 25 yards or more with shots that swerve, dip and make even an average striker a latter-day Rodney Marsh. What present-day football cannot emulate is the mood of adventure that must have accompanied the matches of 100 years ago. At the beginning of the 20th century the old First Division was made up entirely of teams from the north and Midlands. Not until 1904 did Woolwich Arsenal break the mould, although Tottenham Hotspur were a sign of things to come when, as a Southern League side, they won the FA Cup in 1901. That was the year a maximum wage was established, all of £4 a week with no agents around to take a cut. In 1908, three years after Alf Common had moved from Sunderland to Middlesbrough for £1,000, the first four-figure transfer, there was an attempt to impose a limit on fees of £350 but it lasted only four months. The international programme was confined to the four home nations and the only match that regularly caught the imagination was the annual encounter between England and Scotland. When England lost badly nobody called for the manager to be sacked because the post did not exist. The idea of employing someone full-time to pick the team was almost as far-fetched as getting an Italian to do the job. In the first decade of the 1900s, then as now, the league championship was dominated by a handful of clubs, Newcastle taking the title three times with Aston Villa, Liverpool and Sheffield Wednesday each winning it twice. The last were known simply as The Wednesday and could not have foreseen a time when they would be struggling merely to exist. Wage inflation remains the biggest threat to football in the 21st century. The sums paid to Wayne Rooney at Manchester United and demanded, in vain as it turned out, by Carlos Tevez at Manchester City may be nonsensical but the lesser amounts players earn at clubs on smaller budgets are just as great a danger to the game's financial stability. With Fifa having given up trying to control the activities of agents worldwide it is hard to see where reason and common sense can prevail. At least the present season has brought a refreshing challenge to a Premier League plutocracy that was in danger of becoming a cliche. All right, the championship will probably end up in one of the usual places unless Manchester City stop sucking their thumbs long enough to mount a serious challenge on the run-in, and even then it would still be big money that rules. Tottenham or Arsenal would be the most watchable winners although the feeling remains that Manchester United will eventually sleepwalk their way past Liverpool's 18 titles. No, the real interest is in the closeness of the contests fore and aft. On New Year's Day 2001 United were 11 points ahead at the top, Bradford City five behind at the bottom. Today the leading three are separated by two points while Everton, lying 11th, are only three above the relegation area. The Premier League is in danger of becoming democratic. Already Blackpool's Ian Holloway is looking like football's equivalent of John Lilburne, history's leading Leveller.