This is the depressing truth: The Premier League will be won by the country’s ugliest team… or the most boring, writes JEFF POWELL

Just listening to the ballyhoo, we could be forgiven for believing we are approaching the climax of one of the supreme contests of all sporting time. A duel for the ultimate prize between two bands of legend who will be hallowed in the pantheon for eternity. 

Not really.

The depressing truth is that the football championship of England will fall to either the ugliest or the most boring team in this season of what fancifully labels itself the Premier League. 

Whether that be Arsenal (ugh) or Manchester City (yawn) the outcome will be registered as a statistic in the record books. Not in the memory bank of all who yearn for the game we grew in love with. 

On Sunday evening I lost count – at 10 apiece – when tallying the number of nailed-on penalties which went ungiven as Arsenal eked out a scruffy win over Chelsea. That was after some 15 minutes. What this sick apology of a big match came down to was how many corners it would take for Arsenal to snaffle the two goals required to stay a step-and-a-half clear at the top. That’s the way Mikel Arteta, by his own admission, plays the game. By set-pieces.  

The previous afternoon I kept dozing off when trying to process how many times City passed to each other in their own half. Often enough, let us say, to leave Leeds insufficient time to retrieve a single-goal deficit. That’s the way Pep Guardiola plays the game. By possession.

That’s the deathly way the maestro and his prodigy orchestrate the numbers. Professor Pep has become the Pied Piper for almost the entirety of modern football with the tippy-tappy-Tik-Tok tedium which sends the world to sleep but has worked brilliantly for him.

Manic Mikel, the sorcerer’s apprentice, has pencilled those corners on to the blueprint. Then overlaid the entire design with the gruesome strategy of biffing, banging, belting and bullying the opposition in their own goalmouths so as to turn those missiles from the flag into goals. Scores which bear a brutal resemblance to push-over tries in rugby. 

Thus he has inflicted his trend on the game. One that is profoundly damaging to our national game in the long-term, which is now at the mercy of a near-division-full of teams who are not just bending the rules but ignoring them completely. That Arsenal and City are Kop high above the rest is a sorry commentary on the Premier League.

Some of football’s leading lights are worried by what’s going on. Arne Slot, who managed Liverpool to last season’s title with a flourish and whose team are beginning to regain their mojo, acknowledged this week: ‘Premier League games are not a joy to watch.’ By his inference, the only major league thus afflicted. Perhaps because this league and the Football Association are compliant by their silence.

Referees are sinking into a quagmire of bewilderment created by the lack of directives to comply firmly with the age-old laws of football. Under pressure to ‘keep the game flowing’ they are letting players get away with not far short of murder.

Welcome to the WWE with studs on. 

Goalkeepers in particular are in danger. When they fail to catch or clear the ball while being bundled into the back of the net, pinned to the floor or belted in the head or the face, they are criticised for failing to hold their ground. ‘Gotta be strong in these situations,’ bellow the more dim-witted broadcasters. 

‘Physicality’ has become the by-word for New Football. More and more clubs make sheer size and muscularity vital priorities in recruitment of not only big-money transfers but youngsters.

I kept dozing off when trying to process how many times Manchester City passed to each other in their own half against Leeds

Arsenal are not the only culprits but they are the best at it. Who would have expected to find an enforcer-in-chief for their strong-arm squad in a Brazilian? Yet it is Gabriel who is terrorising the Premier League. Especially goalkeepers. This Angel is to Pele’s Beautiful Game what Bad Bunny is to Pavarotti on the musical stage. 

Declan Rice is probably the most overrated player in the game today – probably because he cost more than a hundred million smackers – but consider his contribution to our Sunday viewing. Repetitive bear-hugging of Chelsea defenders as they tried to clear corners. Often wrestling them to the ground. Not a peep of the whistle. He did cut off a couple of runs by Cole Palmer and he joined in some of the ‘physicality’ in other areas of the pitch.  

Such as pushing opponents in the back when ‘contesting’ headers, grabbing arms, pulling shirts, tripping and on one occasion clumping a rival in the face. All of which went unpunished by the referee, along with a myriad of such offences to which Chelsea made their contribution. If there was an inkling of a perceptive pass from the man who is supposed to inspire England to World Cup glory this summer, then I must have missed it.

Nor will his experience in Arsenal’s dark arts be as effective in the Americas as at the Emirates.

FIFA, who are already planning how to stop all the blatant time-wasting, will also instruct their officials to clamp down – oh yes – on such infractions as goalmouth mauling, shoving, shirt-pulling, wrestling, arm-grabbing and especially assaults on goalkeepers. All of which are fouls. None of which, by the way, are hallmarks of courage.

Nor is hacking away at heels from behind and ankles from the side or snide stamping on feet. Hands up any of our readers who can recall when they last saw any of those self-imagined heroes going into hard but fair head-on tackles. Dear me no. That risks taking a genuine knock instead of rolling about the pitch in embarrassingly simulated agony.

FIFA could do worse than oblige every national team to watch film of one of the noblest battles in the annals of the game. That between Pele and Bobby Moore at the 1970 World Cup

Size does matter, especially in certain positions, but any list of candidates for the greatest footballers of all time which does not include Pele, Maradona, Garrincha, Di Stefano, Cruyff, Beckenbauer, Messi, Best, Moore and Puskas is not the worth paper it is written on. All stand under six feet. 

FIFA could do worse than oblige every national team to watch film of one of the noblest battles in the annals of the game. That between Pele and Bobby Moore at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. 

This pair of immortals challenged each other in a test of high skill, profound intelligence, dexterity, anticipation, leadership and, yes, honest tackling. Moore, helped by ‘the save of the century’ by Gordon Banks, stopped Pele from scoring. But he could not prevent the genius pass which set up Jairzinho for the only goal of an epic which ended with that iconic photograph of Pele and Moore exchanging shirts.

All that is a hundred times more worth watching than the underwhelming majority of matches in the delusional Premier League these days. The fastest, most frenzied football, maybe. But the greatest league in the world? Only in the eyes of the committed fanatics who are suffering for their teams, game by game. Which mostly makes for anguished tension, not pure enjoyment. Which means, with attendances declining at more and more grounds, that this league is in more trouble than it knows.

So who would I prefer to win it? The ugly or the boring? Well, since I reported on George Graham’s entire career as an elegant player and an astute manager who still goes to the Emirates and remains a cherished friend, come on Arsenal. If nothing else, do it for George.