EPL TALK: Historic season, but let's not have another one

OLDER Manchester City fans will always have Port Vale away. That’s their fallback position. Before Abu Dhabi’s billions, there was Port Vale away and Paul Dickov and last-minute winners against Gillingham. It wasn’t all petrodollars and Trebles. It was proper suffering. They paid their dues then. Let them celebrate now. The current situation isn’t their fault.

But the current situation is untenable.

Two things can be true at once. Manchester City supporters deserve their moment. The rest of the English Premier League do not, at least not again. The Treble was one for the record books, but not a season worth repeating.

Ironically, the Old Manchester City story doesn’t even happen in the new Manchester City reality. Those feeding off scraps are stuck with Port Vale away forever, proverbially speaking. Rags to riches stories are no longer possible as billionaire capitalism tightens its grip on the one area it should not. Elite sport. Golf is now taken care of. Things are ticking over nicely in Formula 1. And football’s annexation feels just about complete.

This is nothing new, according to Manchester City fans and anyone else with their hands in the oil wells. Oh, but it is. Manchester United won a Treble in 1999, sure, joining the likes of Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Porto. It has been done, but not like this. A nation-state outfit has lifted the Champions League for the first time, a PR exercise entirely funded by an autocratic regime with a disturbing human rights record.

Oh, but China and Russia had the Olympics and the World Cup respectively and Vladimir Putin was reportedly so emboldened by the public relations coup of hosting the planet’s biggest showcase in 2018 that he pushed further into Ukraine as a consequence. Like Victorian hangings in the town square, morally-dubious spectacles are nothing new, so let’s skip the hypocrisy when it comes to this season’s analysis, eh?

Fine, let’s do what Gary Lineker routinely fails to do at the BBC, spectacularly and admirably, and keep politics out of sport. Let’s just stick to football. So, how much did you enjoy this season? What were the most memorable images, beyond Saudi Arabia’s tourism ambassador, Lionel Messi, wearing ceremonial robes?

Was it the never-ending season that began in June and ended in June and a creeping sense that unless Bill Murray has the perfect date with Andie MacDowell or Mikel Arteta finds half a billion quid down a sofa, we’re all destined to repeat a Groundhog Day of inevitable Manchester City trophy wins?

Or perhaps it was that jolly occasion when City’s Treble charge, brought to you by the elusive folks of the UAE, was interrupted by a World Cup, brought to you by the elusive folks of Qatar, which was won gloriously by Messi, whose messages are often brought to you by the very visible folks of the Saudi Tourism Authority?

Other clubs are readjusting their dreams

Just imagine. On a cracked void deck or a patch of unkempt grass, a street urchin is kicking a battered ball and dreaming of a pension plan worth $100 million a year at Al-Ittihad.

But we can’t all be Karim Benzema, or Messi, or even Newcastle United, now the proud subsidiaries of Saudi Arabia’s latest wealth diversification exercise, or Manchester United, still flirting with the Qataris with as much subtlety as a street walker looking for a first customer as dawn approaches.

The rest of us must persist like Oliver Twist, bowl in hand, asking for something more from the game, as appalled overlords remind us that we should just be grateful for the bowl.

That bowl now comes in the shape of the Europa Conference League trophy, or perhaps the Europa League trinket, if we really dare to dream, a slightly patronising crumb for those no longer allowed to sit anywhere near the top table. And while West Ham’s delirious triumph was a reminder of what a victory parade looks like to the non-elite, it was also a reminder of one’s status. Know your place. This is as good as it’s ever going to get.

The Hammers, Brighton, Aston Villa and even Liverpool are readjusting their European visions and casting favourable eyes upon previously unloved trophies. Those ugly sisters now offer a Cinderella story. Thursday night football is no longer a joke, but an aspiration. It’s all they have. Be grateful for the leftovers. The feasts are hosted elsewhere. For good.

Since the EPL kicked off in 1992, only five clubs beyond the established elite have lifted the FA Cup – never mind the Premier League. Everton, Chelsea (before Roman Abramovich), Portsmouth, Wigan and Leicester ducked under the VIP robes and pinched the old pot, and most of those were before the oligarchs came calling.

Football is different now. Ask anyone, but particularly City supporters. They want to lose the asterisk almost as much as they want to win the Treble, because they don’t need the sniping. They have done nothing wrong, but their owners might have, 115 times in fact, as the club faces allegations of financial cheating. Again. City loyalists are bystanders in a battle between an absolute monarchy used to getting its own way and a sport still clinging to naïve qualities like fair play. It’s not their fault. But it is their reality.

Then ask all other supporters for their predictions for next season and expect some mumbling about Newcastle offering a title challenge, probably, and Manchester United, maybe, if the Qataris come in with enough billions, if the Middle East introduces a third party to its PR battleground. This is our reality, to play powerless pawns in a distant struggle between the one-percenters.

At least we were lucky to have Pep Guardiola, Erling Haaland, Jack Grealish and the likeable, deserving Treble winners; a collective, aesthetic masterpiece worthy of a place in any hall of fame. The football was fun. The club’s financial dominance across the board was not. A repeat has to be avoided.

But it’s unlikely. The structure feels too entrenched. Manchester City won the lot. The money. The politics. And the football, in that order, a new world order, established by a global project with unassailable owners.

Even the euphoric celebrations seemed to underline the EPL’s transformation. Grealish deserved the best week of his life, bare-chested and barely sober, as his team-mates celebrated in Ibiza while the rest of us looked on from afar, unable to escape the obvious metaphor. It was a private party for Manchester City. No one else was invited.

Neil Humphreys is an award-winning football writer and a best-selling author, who has covered the English Premier League since 2000 and has written 26 books.

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