'I'd rather be watching us than the Premier League' ... The David Rawson Rotherham United Fan Column

The day before we played Crewe Alexandra, Manchester City were reported as being guilty of almost all charges levelled against them.

The charges describe a different world from the one that Rotherham United exist in. Amounts of money that would power the entire operation of our club for a decade shuffled around, apparently to make something look like something else.

All to fund the playing of a game that has the same name but is wholly different to the one that played out between us and Crewe.

Crewe used to be a club that took pride in the quality of their football, getting the ball down and playing. On this showing, they’re not that anymore.

This was fourth-division football at its most basic: booming wallops downfield, grappling, holding, wrestling, shirt pulling, pushing, shoving, the works. An ugly scuffle of a game, broken up by the pernickety whistling of a referee determined to penalise minor infractions because making the game flow was beyond him. Beyond anyone, probably.

Compare that to the sort of game the blue-shirted Man City team play. There’s none of the poise, the control, the fluidity. None of the grace and glide.

But all of the reality.

Football’s greatness, fundamentally, lay in how the people you were watching play were recognisably like you; just much better at football. They lived in the same world as the people watching them. Their talent set them apart, but not so far apart that they became something else entirely.

That’s largely gone. Football’s an “industry” now. It’s a legitimate ambition to never have to work again by 40 for many players. The players you’re watching – especially the men in the Premier League – maybe they were like you once, but they’re not now.

So of course they maximise every foul, exaggerate every brush of a hand on a defender’s back.

Of course the clubs need complex loopholes in the rules that govern how much they can spend on players.

It’s elite. It’s elitist. It’s the whole point. The game isn’t for you, or about you, or really very much to do with you. These aren’t people like you who happen to be brilliant at football. They’re different, special, and inhabit a different world.

That’s what the Man City charges tell us, really.

And so, yes, as a spectacle, Rotherham vs Crewe was largely rubbish. But it was human and real and honest.

When Paul Mullin gave up on an overhit pass because he knew he hadn’t the pace, you could relate.

When he twisted his body so he deflected the ball just so, you saw what he can do that you can’t.

There is something important in that, even if it looks ordinary.

Honest effort, some scrap and some skill.

I’ll take that over what the Premier League produces every time.