Lloyd Pettiford - The Premier League: A 25 Year Celebration

The Premier League

THE

PREMIER
LEAGUE

25 YEARS

Lloyd Pettiford

urbanepublications.com

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Urbane Publications Ltd
Suite 3, Brown Europe House, 33/34 Gleaming Wood Drive, Chatham,
Kent ME5 8RZ

Copyright Lloyd Pettiford, 2017

The moral right of Lloyd Pettiford and each contributor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781911583097
MOBI 9781911583110
EPUB 9781911583103

Design and Typeset by The Invisible Man
Cover by The Invisible Man

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

urbanepublications.com

For Emma, William, Steve & Carol
(He was never offside)

Contents

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This joke, repeated endlessly through the book is homage to the bloke that used to do the football results on the radio who never seemed sure where this word ought to end.

He used to do it to Wycombe too.

Fore Foreword

Why Should I Buy This Book?

This book is as much about fans as it is about teams. Although the fans are almost exclusively of teams who have played in the Premier League, for the most part you will recognize the same pain, superstition and irrational hatreds at all levels of football. Whilst commending it to you all therefore, here is a special note for Manchester United fans:

Because you are special (in so many ways) and theres lots of you and if you dont pick up this book just to have a quick glance then who will? Youve won the Premier League more often than not (13 of 25 times), and if Millwall fans think no one likes them and they dont care, well you have even more reason to feel like that. As far as I know there are no equivalents of ABU for other teams. So this books admiration of your teams achievement is, on occasion, grudging Ill admitbut Im sure youll take that as a compliment, even if not intended. If you just imagine it was Liverpool who won it so often, thatll give you an idea of how we all feel. None of the occasional invective applies to you personally dear Manchester United supporting reader, and certainly not the lovely people who contributed to this book; but there are plenty out there that find some Man U fans just a teensy bit entitled, spoilt and arrogant (Baker, 2017) so please just regard anything less than fawning admiration as a corrective to Sky. But dont let that put you off.

So this is a book for everyone, and I hope youll really like it. And even if you dont, youll know someone who will really like it, and thats one less Christmas present you need to worry about isnt? Indeed after exhaustive analysisnearly 50 teams and 100,000 words, the books overall conclusion is that: this is probably the perfect Christmas or birthday present for your grandchildren, nephews, nieces and, indeed, anyone at all younger than you. Or older.

Heres just a little bit of what youll be getting:

Genre: Informed comedy non-fiction, originally entitled Premier League: Youre Having A Laugh

Basic premise: An irreverent celebration of the EPLs first quarter century through fan produced content: narrative account, facts, jokes, stories and quizzes. Except quizzes. Covers all teams who ever made it, including the latest additions of Bournemouth, Brighton and Huddersfield.

Benefit 1: Using extensive contacts, its a genuinely fan-built book tapping into news and views not accessible via programmes and newspapers. Ordinary people like you have been involved: aristocrats, professors, poets, ex-professional players, pop-stars oh and just plain old fans.

Benefit 2: When you find the error (all sports books contain them, and were all gleeful and indignant in equal measure when we spot them) you can tweet me ( @UrbanePL25Book ) or wordpress me (premierleaguefanshistory.wordpress. com) and it will be corrected in subsequent versions with a full apology offered and credit (moral) given!

Some Chapters or Features are:

The First 25 Years: An irreverent journey from the official start of football to the present day including analyses of money and songs.

The good, the bad and the ugly: winners, losers, cheaters. Best league in the world it may be, but the Premier League experience (the move from fans to audiences) is not unproblematic.

Teams all 49 of them making use of extensive fan contacts throughout the country. Even Pompey. This may include as examples:

Best/worst players or matches

PL Dream Team

Quotes

Most incredible PL match/season

Funniest songs and incidents

Awards (including best PL team ever which objectively might get Matt Le Tiss on the bench, but probably no other SFC players I promise).

Please note that whichever team you support, if you are a genuine fan, you will be convinced that this book is part of a global conspiracy against your team. And you might just be right you know.

And why shouldnt I buy this book? Billy Ivory, previously owner of a faulty garden conveyancing system, makes the case in the Foreword he kindly supplied.

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(same thing differently presented)

For further excellent background reading, see Shindler, 1998.

As Uncle Bob says I cant say that the football is any better in the premier league with all that money; mind you I watched West Ham win the F.A. Cup, European Cup Winners Cup and the World Cup, when they started out at 6 pounds a week and we had had only 4 Managers since the Club was formed.

Foreword

I have been following Notts County for over forty five years. Which makes me uniquely qualified to write a foreword for a book about the Premier League uniquely, because, of course, Notts have never bathed in the warm and luxuriant waters of the Worlds Greatest League (which is what Sky kept telling me it was when I first indicated I wanted to cancel my Sports subscription a few years ago). In fact, Notts, rather famously, got relegated from the old First Division at the end of the 199192 season, on the very eve of soccers bright new dawn, and therefore missed out on the torrents of TV cash, parachute payments and good old fashioned bungs which Im pretty certain would have seen them challenging for Champions League glory by now. But well let that pass. The point is, because of that exclusion and the very nearness, the almost across the line-ness of the Magpies fall from grace, down into the lower reaches of the EFL, I have always kept a very close eye indeed on the Worlds Most Watched League (see above).