Is Football at an Impasse with its Fans?

I caveat the following by stating that I am an Arsenal fan and as such my views are clouded by what has happened at Arsenal this summer and, it seems pretty much every summer for the past few years...

Angry Blackburn fan lugs his season ticket at Steve Kean

The Olympic Games were great this summer. They galvanized the nation, bringing us together through a shared passion and desire for gold. They showed us what can be achieved through hard work and dedication and that those at the top of their chosen field can show humility and be great role models. I never got as excited about The Games though, as I get about Football and the memory of super Saturday and the numerous life changing performances from Team GB that got us all cheering this summer were quickly forgotten when my thoughts turned to the start of the Premier League.

As an Arsenal fan, this summer has been one of mixed emotions. The enjoyment and anticipation of bringing in three exciting players was tempered by the sale of our captain and best player [insert name here] along with Alex Song, a promising young midfielder. It was actually the transfer of the latter that stuck in my throat and made me cough this blog up because he was a player that by all accounts began to explore other options available to him despite having recently signed a £55,000 a week contract to keep him at Arsenal until 2015.

£55,000 a week is more money than I could spend, it's more money that Song would ever need and for a lad from Cameroon that came to Arsenal as a fairly average 17year old and spent a season on loan at Charlton where he played ok at centre back, it seems an awful lot. Alas this wasn't enough to keep him at Arsenal where he had been turned into a very, very good midfielder. I don't begrudge any player a move to one of the World's best clubs but it's the manner in which these transfers continue to happen, and it's not just to Arsenal players.

In the early days of Abramavich's tenure at Chelsea, the club admirably invested in some domestic talent. The likes of Scott Parker, Sean Wright-Phillips, Glen Johnson, Joe Cole and Steve Sidwell. These players played precious little football and lost at least two years of their careers. All of these players left smaller clubs where they were idolized by the fans (often after just a few good performances) to take a punt at the big time and treble their wages at the same time. With the exception of Joe Cole who was arguably the most talented player of his generation, these players flopped. Fast forward to today and where then we read Chelsea, now read Man City and where we read Johnson, Sidwell, Wright-Phillips and Parker, now read Johnson A, Wright-Phillips, Bridge and, probably, Rodwell.

A rare shot of Steve Sidwell in a Chelsea shirt

I don't mean to focus on the players here because I don't see them as the cause of Football's impending crisis (in fact, sometimes they're the victims - see the case of Michael Johnson) It is just that a definitive shift in the behavior of players and their attitude towards fans lead me to write this blog. The quality of Premier League Football is undeniably brilliant and the entertainment unrivaled. The big issue is that Football and therefore Football players, are becoming so far removed from the fans, that the moment the level of entertainment drops below what we have now become used to, fans are bound to ask the question; " Why am I wasting my time and money on this?"

Money is a very real issue for fans now, more so than ever. Football provides escapism from fans' 'real life' worries, be they financial or otherwise. This wonderfully well written article by Martin Samuel is a personal account of the power that sport can have in providing us with this kind of escapism. And so when Footballers act in such a way that draws attention to the gap between the fans and their game, it frustrates us and rather than providing a distraction from everyday life, Football becomes one of our everyday frustrations.

Looking back on the Olympics and the Olympians that made it so great, it's clear that the gap between fans and those Athletes is far smaller in so many ways. My view of the majority of Athletes is that they are ordinary people that have achieved extraordinary things and as such they are aspirational rather than untouchable, which is what I believe Footballers have become.

When Jimmy Hill lead a revolution in the way in which players should be paid I very much doubt he foresaw the situation we are in today. This report explains how we got to this situation financially and how this fits (or otherwise) into the context of the UK economy.

I don't know the solution but I do know that I have a problem with my relationship with Football and it's protagonists and I'm sure I'm not the only one.