Comfortable and safe they may be, but I loathe modern football stadia in England. Not that we should get too misty eyed over pre-Taylor report grounds you understand, they had long since passed there sell by date. However I still miss terracing so give me this (minus fences)..




..over this..



..any day of the week.

Football was always better 20 years ago. I know this because my Dad told me that regularly.

Perhaps the biggest change for me, as others have expressed, is the impact on ambition.

Once many clubs could set out on a new season with genuine hopes of winning the league. In reality this did not materialise too often but the hope was real and several less fashionable clubs went close.

Now ambition for four or five clubs is limited to finishing fourth and for the rest it is to avoid relegation.

Promotion used to be coveted, but is I suspect feared in equal measure these days given the fate of clubs that overeach themselves.

It was pretty well unknown 20 years ago for clubs to field virtual reserves sides in league games, let alone in the two domestic cup competitions.

There are some positives, not least the much wider coverage of football that ex-pats like myself can access. I am not sure there are enough to balance out the removal of the belief at the start of a season, not matter how irrational, that this might be the year.

That said, I am not currently a fan of a premiership team so it perhaps for those who are to say if the fairly constant sharing of the trophies among three clubs really impacts on their love of the game.

The accumulation of giant squads of top class players by so few clubs, also good young players seemed to go into a big squad early so that they don't get loads of games.

So Bale goes to sit in Spurs reserves for the best part of two years.

Joe Cole, the most creative English midfielder since Gazza, is currently not able to get a game for Chelsea, and when he does he has to play wide left.

Chris Smalling is snapped up by man u after a handful of premiership games.

Parker, Wright Phillips, Bridge etc all opted to be reserves at Chelsea at a time whenthey were in or close to the England squad.

That says as much about the players as it does the clubs. If they would rather sit on the bench for Chelsea for £75,000 a week than play first team football for Villa or Everton for £40,000 a week then all it reveals is that their sole ambition is to accumulate as much wealth as possible. It doesn't seem to stop them bitching about not being given enough starts or how it has thwarted their international career though.

Ticket prices, anyone?

I don't know, Sean. Footballers have to have pretty big egos, and nearly everyone who plays at EPL level will have been the best player in almost every team they've played in. When Bridge, Parker and SWP all went to Chelsea, I'm sure everyone of them thought they'd be going to start, or thought they'd be able to prove themselves worthy of a starting spot (Bridge of course did start for a season, until Cole was bought).

It may be that Bale has learnt more from having to fight for his place at Spurs than he would have done from starting every week at Southampton or another lower team, certainly that is sometimes the case. Of course there are plenty of exceptions too, but it's difficult to expect players to not take a step up because it might not work out.

I don't see the problem being with the players, it's with (as usual) the distorted finances that allow the top teams to have squads of 35 first teamers.

As others have mentioned a lot of shit has gone down since the Premier League’s inception, but it would be wrong to ignore some of the good things that have occurred. The standard of football is unquestionably better than it was twenty years ago. This is in part because English clubs fell behind during the period of the Eurooean ban and only really started to catch up after the influx of technically-gifted foreign players.

I remember being at Stamford Bridge watching Chelsea play Everton in about 1990 and a friend asking me if I thought there was a world class player on the pitch. How we laughed.

With regard to all-seaters, I can think of at least two occasions pre-Hillsborough when I feared for my safety in a crush. I've never had any such concerns since terracing was outlawed. It’s a price I'm willing to pay. It's a shame grounds have lost a lot of their character and the new-builds have been so unimaginative in their construction, but given the economic circumstances of most clubs, it's no great surprise that aesthetics have taken a back seat.

Etienne wrote:
I don't know, Sean. Footballers have to have pretty big egos, and nearly everyone who plays at EPL level will have been the best player in almost every team they've played in. When Bridge, Parker and SWP all went to Chelsea, I'm sure everyone of them thought they'd be going to start, or thought they'd be able to prove themselves worthy of a starting spot (Bridge of course did start for a season, until Cole was bought).


With SWP, there was also a strong argument that in leaving he was keeping the club afloat. A happy coincidence that has seen him do well with all the fans until his recent twattery.

Almost as annoying as the "English football began in 1992-93" is the accompanying "European football began with the Champions League". Which makes it all the more galling that Sky have been claiming all morning that this is the first time CSKA Moscow have reached the last eight of the Champions League, because they were in the last eight of the very first one in 1992-93. They played Rangers, for God's sake, you'd think Sky would remember that.

The Mighty Kubelgog!!! wrote:
I have a video of manchester united's 1991-2 season somewhere, and to be honest, it was by some distance the greatest season there has ever been.


Fixed that for you.

I used to hate going to football when I was a kid, because of the crush, being surrounded by pissed up wankers etc. And so I seldom used to go. Even now, I'd rather have a defined area that's mine than have 30 people pressing against me every couple of minutes.
I don't mind standing at Farnborough as there's plenty of room, no one is ever going to squash you, but I never fully enjoyed a game standing on the Kop the seasons I went most weeks as it was so unpleasant being part of such a sea of bodies.
But then I tend to stand back at gigs etc. as there's nothing I find as unpleasant as having my personal space invaded against my will.

I read that as willy.

They don't do cups of hot bovril anymore. That's what I miss.

I only used to ever drink bovril as a kid at half time, at Exeter City. I wasn't even aware it was available as a product on mass sale to the public until I was much older and saw it in a supermarket for the first time. I think my Dad liked the secret ritual we had of him going to get me my half-time bovril, now I'm grown up I suspect that it was also his excuse to sneak off and down a nifty half-time pint or two as well. He never seemed to come back until five minutes into the second half.

They do Bovril at Twerton Park. I have renewed faith in our local MP since I saw him order one.

I go for a coffee and a Chomp bar per half.

meregreen wrote:


I remember being at Stamford Bridge watching Chelsea play Everton in about 1990 and a friend asking me if I thought there was a world class player on the pitch. How we laughed.



not sure thats an appropriate comparison though...both Chelsea & Everton were both below even mid table mediocrity in 1990...

its a bit like going to see Stoke v Blackburn these days and being surprised at the lack of a world class player on show...

obviously not seen brett emerton lately....

No Bovril anymore?!? Where is this the case? My recollections of drinking the stuff as a child was that it was served at temperatures which required waiting an entire half until it was safe to drink without burning away the roof of your mouth.

I'm a non-smoker, and always have been, but the smell of tobacco smoke was an integral part of going to a game for me. I never cared for the smell of cannabis smoke though which was probably more noticeable before all-seater anyway.

You can still get Bovril at pretty much every ground I go to. I have been right back on it since I packed in alcohol and junk food at the turn of the year. M'learned colleague mnb8 thinks there is no actual meat product or by-product in it any more though.

It's not that hot either, perhaps there are health & safety fears or clubs are concerned about the prospects of scalding-beverage-related hooliganism. It's almost as inconvenient as having to have the top taken off your bottle of pop.

Is this becoming a "eeeeeeeh, football is rubbish nowadays" stereotypical thread? Because I still find it, you know, ace.

You are going to have to distinguish between the "watching it" part and the "being endlessly concerned with who owns the majority of the shares in the club you support" there.

...or were you just talking about the "drinking Bovril" part?

Ah, come on, most of it is really pretty great. I certainly can't think of anything better to do with my time.

Occasionally I have to tell the people who sit around me at Leckwith to stop sounding like an episode of 'Business Lunch' while a game is going on with their intense financial discussion, mind.