Premier League 2016 - football as farce

I've watched the league's opening weekend with the same, transfixed gaze as any other football fan. But there has been, for me, an unmistakable sense of excess to the whole thing. The kind of feeling you get when you've eaten too much sugar, or when a feeling of happiness falls into sharp sadness.

The transfer fees passed around this summer begged belief, as always, from a financial perspective - "how can anyone be prepared to spend that much on a footballer". But the fees are starting to lose any kind of proportion to player ability. There is no longer any obvious sense that the world's most expensive player is among the world's very best players. And plain average Premier League players such as Yannick Bolasie are trading hands for the kind of money that only one or two years back, was held in reserve for the likes of Fabregas: players who competed in Champions League and World Cup finals. This hasn't simply appeared out of the blue, and is obviously a product of the most recent TV deal.

Fans will keep watching, seats and sofas will continue to be filled. But Sky's orgasmic flag-waving over the League's spectacle is beginning to feel too pumped and too forced. Another year, another change of font, another Super Sunday blockbuster sponsor, another commentator, another setup, another in-game analytical feature, another billboard, another anthem, another watermark and another pundit, face, name, stat, boot, shirt and tie. This is no longer the '90s, or the noughties. The veil of progress has slipped and is still slipping: jobs are no longer certain, growth is no longer certain; political structures appear twisted, locked into a state of decay. The show must go on mentality underpinning Scudamore, Murdoch, Glazer, Ashley, Henry and Usmanov feels more bullshit than necessity. And as the decade wears on, we can expect more questions to be asked of the Premier League, and its absurd model of financial exploitation.