Premier League Is Back Quotes

A year before Wenger’s appointment, Leyton Orient manager John Sitton had been the subject of a Channel 4 documentary that recorded him threatening to fight his own players in a famously bizarre dressing-room outburst. ‘When I tell you to do something, do it, and if you come back at me, we’ll have a fucking right sort-out in here,’ he roared at two players. ‘All right? And you can pair up if you like, and you can fucking pick someone else to help you, and you can bring your fucking dinner, ’coz by the time I’ve finished with you, you’ll fucking need it.’ That was the 1990s football manager.

We’re not a football club, we’re actually a sports entertainment media company,” Cook said internally as the new owners swept into City. “So we must create content. We must provide events, we must create shows, we must create drama. And we must be part of the news, front page and back page, in every way. Am I competing with the other football club down the road, Manchester United, or am I competing with Walt Disney, with Amazon?

End paywall TV via a collective boycott, leading to massively diminished value in rights fees, thus undermining the entire monetary basis the Premier League is predicated on. Rights fees acquired by the state for the good of the nation’s health and societal cohesion coupled with proper substantial long-term government investment in sport. Live football to be ‘listed’ so it has to be broadcast free-to-air to 95 per cent of the population to prevent it ever being sold behind a paywall again. All games on BBC One, ITV1 and a jointly operated specialist channel. Premier League abolished as a concept to be replaced by Divisions One to Four.

City had always prided itself on being more authentically Manchester than United. Matches at Old Trafford were so full of tourists that opposing fans sang, “We’ll race you back to London.

Equal parts jealous and appalled, fans of rival clubs who saw hapless City catapult literally overnight into the ranks of world soccer royalty wasted no time in ripping the team for abandoning its roots. “You’re not City, you’re not City, you’re not City anymore” went the song from opposing fans. A few City supporters agreed. Some even mailed back their season tickets.

One particular game sticks in my mind: in March 2007 we went to Middlesbrough during a three-month period when we had the Swedish striker, Henrik Larsson, on loan from Helsingborgs. I could not have asked more from him when, under real pressure, he abandoned his attacking position and fell back into midfield just to help dig out the result. When Henrik appeared in the dressing room at the end of the game, all the players and staff stood up and spontaneously broke into applause for the immense effort he had made in his unaccustomed role. At the end of the season we requested an extra Premier League winners’ medal for Henrik, even though he had not played the ten games that at the time were required to obtain the award.