I'm really not trying to be a grumpy old git with a pipe, slippers and roaring coal fire thinking back to the days when players would get on the top deck of the bus with fans to get to the game. But . . .

The way that fans are slowly being eased out of the game is a worrying trend that may just show that old codgers like me (52 not out) have a valid point. The Premiership kick-off is round the corner and a Channel 4 News online survey is showing how clubs are cashing in on the cool branding of our national game as sales of season tickets are up, up, up.

Yes, it won't come as a surprise that Manchester United lead the way with 56,000 season tickets sold. The champions are followed by Newcastle, Sunderland and Arsenal - with Fulham and Wigan propping up the table (and if you want my view they will be doing that in the real table come May 2008).

'The problem as I see it is that because demand far exceeds supply, there is potentially a generation or more of young fans who will never get the chance to see their club'


Never mind the cost - some clubs like Arsenal, Liverpool and Spurs have capped their prices. The problem as I see it is that because demand far exceeds supply, there is potentially a generation or more of young fans who will never get the chance to see their club.

Arsenal have a waiting list of around 40,000 (and this with an increased capacity stadium), Chelsea have no waiting list, rather a a loyalty system for members, Liverpool have a staggering 60,000 (that's real fans not inebriated ones outside the ground), Manchester United 18,000 and Tottenham 9,000 on waiting lists. So how will these fans ever get to 'go on a date' with their beloved club? No, it's a distant romance for them as they have to make do with being virtual fans and wearing the club shirts. Yes, they can go to the occasional game by being fleeced by a tout, but let's be honest, who can really afford over £100 for two tickets?

So what does a family like mine do? For the past 14 years I have been working Saturdays sub-editing football reports for a national Sunday newspaper, so the chances of watching live Saturday football have been non-existent. I've now left the job and am keen to take my seven-year-old to watch games, just as my old dad took me. We live fairly equidistant from Arsenal, Spurs, West Ham and Leyton Orient and there would be nothing my lad would like better than to watch Premiership football proudly sporting his Arsenal shirt.

Just 20 years ago, pre-Hillsborough, it would have been no problem. You turned up, paid your money and watched your football. Post Hillsborough and of course the goalposts and turnstiles were moved and once the branding and marketing gurus saw big bucks through their designer specs, then the likes of myself and my lad were sent to the scrapheap.

Or have we been? On Sunday, I'm collecting our family season ticket for the Orient and at £350 for the two of us it's a low price to watch 23 games of live football (around £7 each per game). We have seats in the new family stand and even though it's League One on the menu, it's live football with a local club (local enough to nip on a bus and get off six stops later) and it will give my lad a taste of the excitement of match days. And, who knows, we might be involved in a promotion push (relegation more likely if last season is anything to go by).

True, our neck muscles will be flexed watching the ball as it ping-pongs in the air, but I don't care. This is exactly how I started my passion with the game 45 years ago when my hometown club, Leeds United, were languishing in the old Second Division. My club, near my home, not some distant connection 200 miles away because a mate at school follows a certain club.

Yes, I'm aware that today it is impossible for a club like Orient to go up the pyramid and stay at the top, but the experience is what matters.

Of course, in the north-west of England, it's much easier to see top football at a fair price with plenty of seats at Blackburn, Wigan, Bolton and Manchester City (£475 for a season ticket, very good value), and my personal situation is not representative of many places. But with all the money swilling around the so-called big four or five, it would be interesting to know how many of the people with season tickets are actual die-hard fans, and how many are celebrities ordered by their PR companies to be seen 'sitting with the fans'. And how could you expect the real fans, the majority of whom make up attendance at home games, to share their season tickets with those on the waiting lists on a rota basis.

Football is a different type of business to most corporate enterprises in that it has a relationship with the people who buy the product. You go to Tesco because you need a loaf of bread, you go the Emirates because you love Arsenal. Unless the Gunners come up with a way of letting me and my boy get to love them, then we'll go out with a partner from a poorer family in terms of money, but a lot richer as a person.