There’s A Golden Sky – How Twenty Years Of The Premier League Has Changed Football Forever

A few weeks ago I was tuned in to the ultimate refuge of the sports saddo – ESPN Classic.

Between replays of classic Brazil sides providing cliché fodder for hackneyed commentators everywhere and documentary films of assorted pseudo-sports (BMX? Holy mother of god!) they showed a match from Tottenham Hotspurs’ season long dalliance with the old second division in 1977 (9-0 to Spurs against Bristol Rovers since you ask).

I don’t mention this purely out of self indulgence but because  of the differences between football then and now that leap out at you. Match of the Day consisted primarily of extended highlights of a single match – as opposed to the televisual orgy that Sky now serve up; the Spurs team that went down to the second division was made up of the same players from the previous year in Division One and also the following season, post promotion – whereas nowadays players leave a relegated team faster than the Gadaffis’ fleeing Tripoli; teams only had a single substitute on the bench – rather than today’s army of backups. Perhaps not the most insightful of observations but the ‘progress’ of football since those days, specifically following the formation of the Premier League, is precisely what Ian Ridley examines in the thoroughly entertaining There’s A Golden Sky.

Ian Ridley takes as his starting point the, at the time, Big Five clubs’ establishment of a Premier League at the end of 1991 and he journeys around the country profiling teams from the lower leagues (such as Wembley FC who scrape an existence in the shadow of the national stadium) to the Premiership itself (comparing Man United to the Kremlin in its control of access, image and output – MUTV as a modern day Pravda anyone?) and back down to the 88 amateur pitches at Hackney Marshes (the largest concentration of football pitches in the world).

There’s A Golden Sky – How Twenty Years Of The Premier League Has Changed Football Forever contains plenty to interest and some chapters that are genuinely gripping. A surgeon’s account of the Bradford fire and its aftermath are tragically vivid while Matthew Etherington’s candid account of his descent into the abyss of a gambling compulsion engenders sympathy rather than schadenfreude.

There are plenty of lighter moments as well. A power cut sees Arsenal cut short their pre-match warm up at Selhurst Park. As the players return to the dressing room Arsene Wenger asks what the problem is, to which Ray Parlour responds ‘There’s been a berm’. ‘A berm?’ quizzes Wenger, at which the rest of the team wet themselves. Then there’s the strange doggedness of Blackpool in retaining the frankly Vic Reevesian ‘Clifton Quality Meats’ as a sponsor in the face of slightly more glamorous post promotion offers. I also found Ridley’s description of the impotent and ludicrous pointy stick wielding 5th and 6th officials in European games pretty amusing.

As you might imagine, the thread that runs through the book is one of money. How it enables the realisation of ambition, attracts the talented and villainous in equal measure and, in some cases, corrupts and destroys. There’s the salutary tale of Blackburn Rovers for example. Jack Walker, possibly the first of the big time footballing beneficiaries invested the, for the time, astronomical sum of ￡30 million and watched his boyhood team win the league. Following Walker’s passing and subsequent corporate takeover and hamfisted management Blackburn were transformed into dour midtable makeweights along with the Boltons and Villas and are currently relegation contenders with their manager Steve Kean surely next in line for a statement of unequivocal support from his chairman.

The book isn’t without its flaws though. After an enticing enough start describing the circumstances of the Premier League’s formation Ridley fails to explain precisely what happened. I would have liked a discussion of what changed from the old Division One in terms of control, income and separation from the FA. Surely an understanding of these issues is crucial as a context for a reader’s appreciation of subsequent chapters?

Additionally, I think the structure of the book could do with a little tinkering. Maybe it’s just me, but, being a fan of non-fiction writers such as Misha Glenny and Michael Lewis who take pretty complex subjects and render them into the shape of a novel, I expect an overarching narrative to corral the various themes and ideas in a book – which doesn’t happen here.

These minor gripes aside, as a collection of essays on contemporary football in all its forms, there’s plenty of well researched material for any football fan to get their teeth into. Ridley doesn’t go for some post-fanzine elegy to an imagined past of heaving terraces on rainy nights in Scunthorpe and entire Saturdays filled with FA Cup Final Swapshop but a more measured series of observations on both the good and bad in football since the Premier League’s inception.

Bookending things are chapters about Paul Gascoigne then and now who, Ridley seems to hope, can be seen as a microcosm of the league itself – the road of excess leading to the palace of wisdom I guess. But whether Gazza’s current sobriety and realigned priorities will endure is anyone’s guess – and whether the Premiership will experience a similar phase of abstinence and reflection seems pretty unlikely.

There’s A Golden Sky – How Twenty Years Of The Premier League Has Changed Football Forever by Ian Ridley is published by Bloomsbury priced £18.99.