I read with interest your article on Manchester City’s dominance of the Premier League over recent years (The dismal story of modern football can be summed up in two words: Manchester City, 9 June). I also reflected on my experience of the “halcyon days” and it provoked many happy thoughts from my visits to Elland Road to see the Leeds team managed by Howard Wilkinson winning the league – the year before it became the money-go-round Premier League.
However, just as Liverpool and Manchester United did in past eras, Manchester City now dominate not as a consequence of frenzied spending, but of the management of Pep Guardiola. He is setting a standard of excellence that the managers of other teams need to achieve to compete – just as the leaders of Liverpool and Manchester United did in the past.
City represent progress and improvement in the game, from a management and tactical perspective. It is up to the others to improve their performance to compete.
Ken Brown
Chesterfield, Derbyshire
• I agree that Manchester City’s vast wealth and subsequent dominance has skewed competition in their favour. It leaves the more lowly clubs making up the numbers every season, with only the constant anxiety of trying to avoid relegation as our “excitement”.
I would also suggest that it’s not only the best players they hoover up but supporters too. My friend’s eight-year-old son, who plays football, recently declared himself a City supporter, even though he lives in Huddersfield. This is purely down to the success and prominence of the team.
I can see a time in the future when local clubs don’t have enough support to keep going once the older generation, long sufferers of disappointment and low expectations, die off. Many youngsters naturally like the idea of a team that wins stuff: step forward Manchester City. Teams have always been chosen for their success, but now it feels as if that success has been bought, much to the detriment of everyone else and the very nature of competition.
Marion Langford
Horbury, Wakefield
• I finished Phil Mongredien’s lament for the passing of proper football just as my 36-year-old son called round. I invited him to read and applaud it, but his comment was: “He’s like you. He wants the world back to when he was a kid, without the bad bits.”
He then reminded me of football tales that I’ve told him over the years: pitches like a sea of mud from the start of the season (Maine Road), “terraces” built of oil-soaked railway sleepers (Rochdale), avoiding being crushed by sheer luck (the Witton end at Villa Park), being bombarded by bricks from a bridge on the way back to the railway station (Ewood Park), racist chanting (everywhere), beery, male aggression (everywhere). As for the bogs…
Laurence Inman
Birmingham
• Phil Mongredien presents a depressingly accurate picture of modern football. Sport without genuine competition is an empty spectacle – witness Formula One. The charges of financial breaches against Manchester City, and – if proven – the action taken are therefore crucial. It is hard to be optimistic, especially when fans countenance any ownership, however repugnant, if it holds out the prospect of success, however empty.
John Murray
Mayfield, East Sussex
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