Column

Comment

Football

Sport

16 August 2024

6 min read

Is the Premier League too much of a good thing?

A weary look ahead to the new season.

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

Four footballers stand arms crossed looking expectant and confident.

Premier League.

Well, it’s the time of year again when my emotional well-being is governed by the weekly performance of Liverpool Football Club. Yes: the Premier League is back!

The start of a new season is usually abuzz with the excitement of possibilities. So many questions, so many possible outcomes. What will life look like after Jürgen Klopp? Will we win the league? Will we ever sign a defensive midfielder? This should be an exciting time for any football fan; a time of hope, of daring to believe this really is your year.

So, why does the start of the season fill me with such dread this year?

Normally as the season starts, I know when all the games are; who Liverpool are playing, where, and when. I’ve watched Liverpool’s pre-season friendlies to see if we’ve changed formation or made tactical tweaks. I’m up to date with all the players bought and sold by clubs across the league.

Not this year. This year the season has caught me completely off guard and I’m finding the prospect of yet another year of football hard to process. I was invited to join a work fantasy football league this week and, honestly, the thought of it made me want to cry.

When did the sport I love so much begin to feel like such an obligation? Why does being a football fan feel like such hard work?

I think I’m just tired of football. No, not tired. Fatigued. Exhausted.

Or, more accurately, football itself – the sport – is fatigued. As though it’s been drained of all enjoyment.

As television, rather than sport, football inevitably lives in the aftermath of the ‘HBO effect.’

There are all sorts of reasons for this. To start with one of the more obvious ones, Video Assistant Referees (VAR) have turned football into a glorified science project. It’s now a common occurrence for matches to be stopped for extended periods while three men in a portacabin miles away from the game pull out their CGI rulers. All to determine if an attacker has a toenail offside, so they can gleefully disallow a goal and congratulate themselves on a job well done. The line between ‘being right’ and ‘doing right’ is blurred more than ever as commentators bemoan the increasing gulf between ‘the laws of the game’ and ‘the spirit of the game.’

The standard and nature of refereeing in English football certainly isn’t helping my enjoyment of it. But it’s only part of a wider problem.

But there’s a truth about football that many football broadcasters and organizations don’t want to face.

Football is now primarily a televised commodity - content. Most football fans across the globe engage with the sport primarily through a screen, rather than at a stadium. As television, rather than sport, football inevitably lives in the aftermath of the ‘HBO effect.’

Prestige HBO shows like The Sopranos, The West Wing, The Wire, Game of Thrones (and countless others besides) have shaped the landscape of TV and, by extension, the culture around us. No longer confined solely to HBO, there seems to be, at any given moment, at least one TV programme you simply have to be watching if you’re going to keep up with the cultural conversation. If you’re not watching, you’re left behind.

This is the context in which football finds itself in 2024. No longer sport, but drama. And drama that begs to be discussed. A series of prompts for those sought-after ‘water-cooler moments’ that dominate conversation throughout the week. “That was never a red card!” “We were robbed!” Competitive sport boiled down and reduced to a series of controversies and talking points.

Because football is more television content than sport now, these controversies are not just discussed in the immediate context of the match in question. No, all week between games, key moments and decisions are slowed down, dissected, viewed from multiple angles, pulled apart.

I watch matches, and then watch people talk about the matches I’ve watched, until there’s another match to watch. There is simply too much football, and too much talking about football. All in service of football as television.

On top of this, the matches themselves are only becoming more frequent. This year, the Champions League will have an extra two games in the group stage.

And then there’s international football. This summer alone, there has been the Euros and the Olympics and, during breaks in the Premier League, players represent their nations in friendlies, World Cup qualifiers, and Nations’ League games (the competition literally no-one asked for).

This is to say nothing of proposals for a 39th Premier League game played abroad and an expanded Club World Cup from 2025 (again, neither of which fans seem to be clamouring for).

And all these matches are taking place within this context of football as television content. There’s not just more football, but there’s more football to talk about, more contentious refereeing decisions, more player mistakes and tactical battles to unpick.

But there’s a truth about football that many football broadcasters and organizations don’t want to face. Loads of it is really boring.

There’s no guarantee anything of actual interest will happen in any given football match. Goals in football are relatively scarce compared to other sports. Liverpool beat Manchester United 7-0 a few years ago and it was heralded as borderline divine intervention. If a rugby match finished 7-0, fans would be asking for a refund.

Authentic mundanity will always be more compelling than manufactured drama.

That’s one of the beautiful things about the beautiful game; it’s authentic. There are no pre-written storylines, and no perfect endings or twists set in stone. It’s real life. Like real life, it can often be mundane.

That should be no surprise, really. At the end of the day, football is a game we humans created to pass time and have fun. Like all sport, football is human flourishing in practice. By this I mean that, through playing sports, we get a glimpse into what it is we’ve been put here to do: to enjoy our existence. It is an expression of communal joy found in delighting in the physicality of our nature as created beings. When we take it too seriously or make too much of it, we obscure that fundamental truth to which it points, even at its most mundane. That we are creatures created to flourish and find joy in our creatureliness.

Authentic mundanity will always be more compelling than manufactured drama. In its endless pursuit to inject drama into the sport so it can compete as television, football has lost the mundanity and authenticity that makes it so compelling.

All of this has been somewhat lost in contemporary football and goes some way to explaining why the thought of yet another season of endless debates, drama, and analysis of the sport I love makes me feel rather exhausted. I just want to watch some people kick a ball.

So, what are my hopes for this Premier League season? It might sound counterintuitive, but if there was less football and less football drama in my life, that would do for me. Failing that, I’ll take a Liverpool treble.

Article

Church and state

Comment

Community

Trauma

5 August 2025

5 min read

After Southport: how to communicate amid tragedy, rumour, and riot

Handling the media in the aftermath brings dread, discretion and dignity

Stuart Haynes

Stuart is communications director for the Diocese of Liverpool.

A media pack await a press conference in a street.

Media covering the Southport attacks.

The Emperor of Byzantium, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Working from home in the quiet town of Ormskirk, about four miles from Southport, the first I noticed was a cacophony of sirens accompanied by our local Facebook groups buzzing with speculation over what it was this time. The news started breaking. An incident in Southport, vague details at first but enough to start that feeling of unease.

Then the phone call and email. The local vicar and one of our Archdeacons seeking advice as inevitably the media would be looking for comment. I’ve taken a similar call many times over the 20 years I have worked with the church. It sets a mix of contradictory emotions. Selfishly you can’t help thinking there goes my plans for the day before you are sharply brought up to the knowledge that the reason for this is a tragedy for others.

Southport brought out a further emotion. When I was a student, I lived for a year close to the location of the stabbings. 30 years on and the suburban area I knew was seemingly unchanged. Yet everything was different.

The role of the press officer at this point involves navigating a tricky balance. You have a job to do, the journalists you deal with have a job to do. You are constantly fielding phone calls, jotting messages juggling time slots. You have a relentless barrage of people putting interview requests in and you want to ensure the right voices are heard and that those who represent aren’t worn out by interview upon interview.

Then you remember what caused the story in the first place. You think of the emergency services working hard to support those in need. Above all you think of the victims and the families – at that time not knowing how many or how serious. And the sense of gloom deepens as the rumours of how serious the situation spreads before you get word of a police conference fearing the worst before the worst gets confirmed.

At these times the mood amongst the media teams always feels strange. Acutely aware of the pain of the situation and sympathetic to what’s happened they can’t escape the job they have to do. I have seen this over many years mainly through the management of the press pens outside funerals at Liverpool Cathedral and churches across the region. You get to know some of the pack well, mainly and somewhat grimly reuniting at the next tragedy. They are massively co-operative with a strong sense of camaraderie, yet you can feel the pressure coming down to them from their news and picture desks. So, a sharing of resources and support occurs underpinned by a hint of journalistic competition.

The press officer’s role here is to feed the machine. It’s hungry. They have time to fill and very often, particularly so close to when the event happened, everyone is more speculative than informed. The machine needs feeding whatever and the church voice can be a calm voice of authority speaking the anxieties and wishes of the local community. However, we don’t want to be rent-a-voice, we are not helpful if we seem to be trying to grandstand over someone else’s grief. We need to show the compassion and love that our faith and Christian values teach us.

That became critically important on the second night when things turned ugly and the story was hijacked by rioting right wing mobs. Having been to the peaceful and respectful vigil on the afternoon I drove back past the scene of the stabbings on my way home. You could smell the tension in the air as people were converging on the streets exuding a purpose that did not seem like the sorrow from earlier that day.

The media aftermath for the church was then to support the efforts showing the community rebuilding whilst also calling for harmony, standing shoulder to shoulder with representatives from all faiths.

And on to the funerals.

There are many patterns to organising press coverage at a funeral. Usually, we need a pen to marshal the cameras in a way that enables them to get the pictures they need whilst maintaining a respectful, sympathetic distance. It feels there is a nigh on obligatory picture of the service order, my hand featuring in many of these shots. There is a lot of standing and waiting, clarifying the minutia of the service so the reporters can tell the story and capture the atmosphere.

Yet for me each funeral is different as I try to ensure the family’s wishes predominate. Southport was a case in point. Of the two funerals in Anglican churches (one victim was from a Roman Catholic family) one family wanted no coverage and my role was simply to make sure that wish was honoured. The other saw cameras in and around church and a full suite of reporters so we work hard with them to ensure respect. Mostly that involves a combination of setting consistent fair rules and supplying enough for them to tell the story. Journalists can cope with told they can’t do something provided their rivals are getting the same message. Lose the consistency you lose the pack as I experience outside Ken Dodd’s funeral when I had to scream at the press pack to get back in their pen before the cortege arrived.
I see this as a ministry. I have learnt techniques over the years, witnessed fights in graveyards, stood soaking waiting for the funeral to end and the coffin to leave so I can relax. Doing this is a privilege which spills over into the funerals I conduct as a priest. As do the learnings from those funerals that, in turn, inform my ministry. Get it right it becomes a fitting, respectful and dignified way for the wider community to say goodbye to a victim.

Then when it’s done we move on. The press pack to the next day’s story myself to the tasks from the routine job that I had to ditch. That’s easier for us. But the families and loved ones can’t easily move on from their pain and grief.

Support Seen & Unseen

Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,500 articles. All for free.
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief