The dashing of Premier League dreams
Preston North End hasn't been in England's top flight for more than seven decades. They will almost certainly have to wait at least another year.
PRESTON, ENGLAND • It is about an hour before kickoff and we are sitting in The Gentry Bar, the pub on site at Deepdale Stadium, home of Preston North End.
A family has taken the table next to us. Grandparents and two boys, all of them serious North End fans. One of the boys was a mascot, the term for the kids who come out with the players when the starting lineups are announced on the field. His player was Liam Miller, a Canadian forward. They are quite pleased to have met a couple of Canadians, and want us to know that they rate Miller highly. He’s a good player, and he was kind to the boy. Granddad shows us a photo of Liam with him. When Mom and Dad arrive and are introduced, Dad pulls out his phone to show us the photo of his boy and Liam.
The grandparents explain that they go to every home game and most away games. This would take some doing. Preston is in the northwest of England. It’s four hours by car to London, and further still to the coastal cities beyond.
Grandmum is originally from Wales. Her other team is Swansea City. “I support two bad clubs,” she says with a laugh and a shake of the head. But she says they love following Preston, who on this day begin in seventh place in the Championship, England’s second tier. She says, in almost a confessional tone, that she doesn’t like the Premier League. It’s boring, she says. The same clubs win all the time. (Although tell that to a fan of Manchester United.) Granddad warms to the subject. The Premier League is all about money, he says. The big teams are pricing out regular fans, he says. Later, when the subject turns back to Liam Miller, they say they worry he will be sold to one of the bigger Championship clubs, one with Premier League ambitions. A Sunderland, for example. A club like North End simply can’t compete with them on wages, he says. Deepdale holds just under 24,000 fans when full. The big Premier League clubs have stadiums that can hold more than 60,000. The revenue gap is massive. As if to illustrate the small-timey feel, when a large banner is unfurled before kickoff to honour Sir Tom Finney, North End’s greatest player, it is pointing the wrong way. The fans have to bunch it up again, get it turned around, and unfurl it again. They get it right the second time.
On this day, Granddad’s point about the revenue gap is unfortunately made on the field. Norwich City, the opponent, began the day in sixth place, just a spot above North End, in the last of the promotion playoff spots. Norwich City has also recently been in the Premier League, and thus still has some financial clout.
North End begins the game reasonably well, and creates a few chances off set pieces, but the visitors hold them at bay and then, in the 84th minute, Norwich scores off a straightforward break down the wing. City’s substitutes made the difference; North End struggled when a couple of starters came off.
As the crowd filed out and began the walk back to the town centre, the usual mutterings of disappointment could be heard. Some didn’t like the substitutions. Others think they should have come sooner. Still others missed Liam Miller, who was out with an injury.
Preston North End would end the day back in 10th place in the Championship, passed by two more clubs, their chances of getting into the promotion playoffs all but dead. They were relegated from England’s top flight in the season after Tom Finney’s retirement, and haven’t been back since. That was in 1961.
Ah, well. The Premier League is boring anyway.
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Later that night, we find ourselves at Plug & Taps, a wee bar in downtown Preston. A couple of locals are talking about watching football, and though they weren’t speaking to us, the place was small enough that they might as well have been. She’s talking about having been to see Bamber Bridge that day.
That’s a proper tiny club, in England’s seventh division. Technically professional, but just barely. The home ground, Tom Finney Stadium, named for the Preston legend, holds fewer than 3,000 fans. (The bartender, incidentally, laments that this placed used to be called the Iron Gate before it was renamed for Finney. He has a point: the Iron Gate is a badass name. Very intimidating.)
Anyway, she’s talking about Bamber Bridge, and how much she prefers it to the glitz of the Championship. That division is all about the money, she says.
No matter where you are on England’s football pyramid, concerns about finances are never far away.