There was a time when Terry Tappin and I used to pack a small bag and head off to the Iberian peninsula to enjoy the largesse of our Spanish football association colleagues and take in one of the marvellously competitive La Liga games.

For years the league fizzed with terrifically entertaining games where results involving the top teams had a frisson of expectation, as any result was possible. Who can forget that sparkling Real Sociedad team marshalled by Xabi Alonso that should have won the league in 2003 or the swashbuckling Deportivo team of Tristan, Valeron, Mauro Silva and Fran that murdered Real Madrid in the Copa del Rey final and even the grinding success of Benitez’s Valencia. Great days. And although Real Madrid and Barca were always around the top, results were never certain.

But now, how times have changed. We received an invitation from the lads in Spain a couple of weeks ago and both Terry and I made feeble excuses to skip the trip. What’s the point? The results are never in doubt. The top two are so superior to all the other teams that the league is almost Scottish in its monotony. Look at this weekend. Real Madrid beat Espanol – the team in sixth place – playing with 10 men for the entire game. Teams turn up at the Bernabeu and the Camp Nou and play with an almost supine reverence.

It’s a classic example of the rich getting richer and richer. It’s well known the top two in Spain snaffle the majority of the TV money and while the Premier League has a slightly fairer system we are undoubtedly moving towards an age when a significant proportion of teams begin the season knowing they are playing for nothing.

It’s a sobering thought that the world’s supreme capitalist nation runs its major sport, the NFL, along egalitarian lines by sharing out the cash and talent equally, as they know full well that lack of competition in the league is a poor product. So the Premiership and La Liga beware. The current age of football is buoyant and monied but those of us slightly longer in the tooth can remember less well-heeled times.

And as for our jaunts to the continent, Terry and I have decided to change tack and eschew the yawn of La Liga for a while in favour of a trip to Bloomfield Road where romance and attacking flare live on…and where you never quite know what’s going to happen.

Toodle-pip

Your Chairman

WR Howe