true but the people's game does exist in other places than the premier league, a place where local businessmen still own the local club.
Doubt there is much profit in it for 95% of them.
Yes, but in those cases, they do it for the status. It's like having a yacht, or 27 Bentleys, or whatever. It's still a big thing to be Chairman of Rotherham, or whatever, at least locally. And you probably get a ticket for the FA Cup Final. You might, at best, find some guy who has made good big time, loves his local club, and owns it in the same way some others do a massive model railway or a traction engine. But you will also find spivs like the one who owned a certain local club, working some cute angle and hoping to make money somehow, maybe by closing it down and selling the assets.
You have to go down to the level of Prestwich Heys or Abbey Hey to find clubs that are
really 'community clubs
'. You couldn't conceivably run City (or United, or Liverpool, or Arsenal) on that basis, and it's delusional to pretend you could.
It's the false romanticism that I find risible. This oh-so-common delusion that in a past golden age (usually about 1955) everything was fucking wonderful. It wasn't. And even if it was, the world has changed utterly.