Fever Pitch – the Rise of the Premier League – Review!

Football of course started that day , anyone who thinks otherwise are idiots . It was a prehistoric game played and watch by Neanderthals before then and nothing good ever came from the football league’s 100 plus years. Got that? Well , if you have you would love this.

The documentary was done using the big protagonists of the day and filmed in the style of them being filmed when they were not supposed to be filming.

This worked magnificently in ‘once upon a time in Iraq’, when you had soldiers, journalists and public showing human sides off the camera as they talked about heart shredding things, Vinny Jones describing how hard a bastard he was ‘back in the day’ didn’t have quite the same impact.

The documentary was well made but really should have changed the title of the first episode to when Manchester United won the first premier league title.

The reds have always been the media darlings and this documentary showed how every TV station were itching for them to win. Every game.

Martin Tyler shouting ‘yessssssss!!!, yessssss!!!!!! For Manchester United’ when Bruce scored in injury time was pass the sick bucket time , he might has well have ran on the pitch and got off with Brian Kidd .

Totally embarrassing. It was strange to say though that the documentary spent more time on that Sheffield Wednesday game than actually discussing how the Premier League came to be.

We got David Dein, we got Martin Edwards sitting guffawing at an Italian restaurant , we got news at ten footage and we got anecdotes that left the football league and leeds chairman Leslie Silver looking like a buffoon who was standing in the way of control.

Did the biggest breakwaway in the history of English football really get sorted between the potato skins and the pizza in one sitting? It sure looked like that here.

No mention that ITV’s and later the FA’s Greg Dyke had rallied the troops to do the very thing 3 years previous . ITV’ were not mentioned at all despite holding the rights to live games at the time and being expected to win the race for this as well.

BBC getting match of the day back was no consolation for a huge percentage of the country who waved goodbye to live football.

The article from Murdoch’s’ ”Sunday Times’ saying football was a game played and watched by slum people was probably written by someone who didn’t understand football or its deep seated roots in working class communities but it was used as a stick to beat it with here and proof that yes, because of one article , football had to change . Also the footage of Millwall fans rioting at Luton in 1985 was shown, failing to add that it led to an away fan ban and a membership scheme endorsed by Thatcher.

The biggest shock for me that this programme used the footage of that as a reason why football needed to change and didn’t once mention that in the time between that riot and the premier league being formed,

over 150 fans were killed at Valley Parade and Hillsborough. That’s the reason football was changing not because Edwards wanted a bit more cash with his tiramisu.

The programme made a big error there . It felt as though they dodged that issue. The early sky games showed dancing girls in front of a kippax stand half built at Maine Road.

This was so because of the Taylor report , not because Murdoch had came up with an eye watering amount at the time.

Sky putting up that huge amount of cash at the time genuinely got me thinking though that yes, how much of a gamble it was. His inside man ‘at Tottenham Alan Sugar was strangely absent at the Italians but surely the fact that he made the dishes was worth a mention.

The thing is ‘this programme isn’t the rock and goal years, it isn’t billed as a season review of 1992-93 . It’s a good job because if you were expecting anything on title challengers Aston Villa and Norwich you were sorely disappointed . Villa mentioned once and Norwich not at all , despite City leading the inaugural season until 30 January and beating Bayern Munich.

Why were Blackburn Rovers covered so much in the first episode ? why was Beckham interviewed? His opinion of the Man Utd youth team that invaluable?

I did have a laugh at the Eric Cantona section. He has been a hermit for years and his appearances on advertising ‘a betting site , a beer company ‘and now this , some people would think that Eric needed the cash.

Did Leeds really rescue this ‘enfant terrible’ from Frances dictatorial jaws? Or in reality did they not just get him from Sheffield Wednesday , 30 miles away.

Maybe I’m being too churlish here because the documentary was good and with more Newcastle to come, it should get better.

Newcastle were not around in the premier League when it started but still had the 4^th‘highest crowd average in the country behind Liverpool, Man U, champions Leeds and Runners up Villa.

While the other big clubs mentioned Everton and Tottenham had crowds of less than 20,000.

The same issues around the European Super League now, where there then and money willed out , just like it will now.

Still though would you hoy the money like Sky did for a league that saw Wimbledon and Oldham play each other in front of 3,000?

I cant stand what he did but the foresight and the skullduggery of Murdoch to foresee the game being such a key to his own business empire was startling .

For me the first episode was promising but in a lot of ways completely missed the truth. People dying changed football , not half time dancing girls but then that’s not great tele is it?