Has the Premiership lost its spark?

Has the Premiership lost its spark?

We are but days away from the opening fixtures of 2008-2009 Premier League and I guess I should be stupidly excited about the new season by now. My team, Portsmouth, have just had their best ever season, having finished 8th and won the FA Cup, a feat no Portsmouth fan would have ever given any realistic thought too, not even after a heavy nights worth of drinking. Everything should be rosy in theory, we’ve just bought a new 11miliion striker and are playing in Europe for the first time ever, it should be the stuff of dreams but I find myself becoming more and more disillusioned about the upcoming season.
Looking at the league it is highly unlikely Portsmouth will ever finish any higher than 8th and the best we could ever dream of is 5th. The harsh truth is we can never win the league, we will never come close. Back before the days of Sky Sports and Andy Gray a good manager could put together a team and try and aim for the stars. Look what Brian Clough did at Forest and Derby County.
Clough took two teams going nowhere fast and made them into league champions and in Forests case, European Champions. Clough had money to spend but not the bottomless pits that are in existence today and had to be clever with who he bought. It was the astute nature of his signings, plus his beliefs on the way the game should be played and his tactically nous, that helped bring him his success. The stark reality of today is this will never happen again in Britain unless Roman Abramivoch fancies a challenge and throws all his money at a team of no hopers or renames them Harchester United......
The fact Portsmouth can’t win the Premier League is made worse by the fact that they won’t. I’m not a glory hound looking to bask in the pleasures of victory, far from it, and I’m not saying winning is the be all and end all, but the fact we compete, and I use that term very loosely, in a league which has been monopolised by four teams since the mid 90’s, has rendered the premier league far from competitive.
The likes of Portsmouth, Villa, Everton, Man City and Tottenham are stuck at a crossroads of where to go from here. If they want to even vaguely challenge the status quo they need to spend big to attract the type of players to do so. But in doing so they put themselves in danger, buying over inflated and over priced players commanding excessive salaries. These salaries can only really be paid if the clubs are pulling in the gates and rewards of competing in the Champions League and even the UEFA cup. Look at Leeds United. They saw the dream and they chased it but when it went wrong the effects where catastrophic and now the club is spending its second season in league 1.
The trouble is that the big four will keep on getting the best talent from home and abroad as they have the big money and the big reputations. Liverpool won nothing last season, did not even come close, but can still attract a Robbie Keane for £20million. The big clubs have the big money, generated from the cash cow of the Champions league which they have all been regularly attending since the turn of the millennium. This money gives them a huge financial advantage over the rest of the league and one that I can never see being over turned.
The future? The rich get richer and the rest fight amongst themselves for a chance to go into the intertoto cup. All that can happen is that the 2nd tier of Premier League teams becomes solidified, making the league even more stagnant. I’m sure that fans of Rotherham, Bournemouth and Luton, teams who are staring into the mouth of oblivion and face an uphill struggle to stay in the football league would undoubtedly swap positions with Portsmouth but the reality of it is at least they have something realistically to aim for and achieve this year. Finishing 6th does not press the right buttons for me.