On the agenda this week: non-league player welfare, clubs in crisis (that’s genuine crisis, folks), the Ryman League Premier and Ryman Division 1 South (sorry Div 1 North, we’ll get to you another time) and a quick round-up of the Conference National.

Click to download or listen to TFT92 or subscribe in iTunes.

On the agenda: tackling, the FA Cup Third Round, the Africa Cup of Nations and the BBC’s treatment – or otherwise – of The Football League Show.

Click to download or listen to TFT91 or subscribe in iTunes.

Gary Andrews hosts and attempts to keep order as Team Twofootedtackle (Chris Nee, Sam Coare and Ryan Keaney) takes on The Sound Of Football (Terry Duffelen, Chris Oakley and Graham Sibley). Who will triumph? Will anyone care? Tune in to find out.

Normal service, or as near to normal as we ever get, will resume in 2012. Happy Christmas!

Click to download or listen to TFT90 or subscribe in iTunes.

In this week’s show we pay tribute to Speed and his exceptional career and character. Of course, our thoughts are with his family and friends at this extremely challenging time.

We also talk about the Premier League and its promoted clubs, Major League Soccer, artificial pitches and – following Stan Collymore’s recent comments – depression and mental health issues in football.

Click to download TFT89, or subscribe in iTunes.

Rocco gives us the lowdown on Serie A, while Jon and Chris chat Serie A. There’s a more nuanced, if still critical view of Sepp Blatter’s latest gaffe, while we attempt to muddle through a section on MLS without Mr Nee. Plus, one member of the pod displays a worrying level of knowledge of the videos of ’90s popsters 5ive.

Click to download TFT88, or subscribe in iTunes.

It will be accompanied by a bi-monthly England fanzine, available as a PDF.

I’ll say at the outset that the TFT Podcast is going to continue as it is. It still feels relevant and, above all, it’s still a highlight for me every fortnight. I think and hope that the other regulars involved feel the same way because otherwise you’re just going to have to put up with my solo witterings.

For now, all URLs, RSS feeds, iTunes feeds etc. will remain as they are for the podcast.

The blog is done, however. I started it in January 2008 and over the years have enjoyed working on it. It’s opened doors, created lasting real-world friendships. My enthusiasm for it has gone, but – as I said – I see this as an opportunity to try something new (or rather revive something old – more on that soon too) and I couldn’t be happier about it. As they say in football, I’m buzzing.

Some quick thanks, then, before I change my Twitter name and kick this place into the abyss. Firstly, to my co-editor Gary Andrews, who’s not only taken the edge off the huge amount of work it takes to run this kind of site, but also essentially gave it an extra year by talking me off the edge a few times before. And thanks to the many writers who’ve contributed brilliant work to the site – particularly since last year’s rebuild by the brilliant Roger Chasteauneuf and Gerard Harvey – headed by Ryan Keaney. Every word from every author has been appreciated.

So there you have it. It is what it is. Bring on the future.

Chris Nee

Turning to on-the-pitch matters, the pod look at Chelsea’s weaknesses, the Premier League, the FA Cup and the Championship. There’s also plenty of talking points as the MLS playoffs build towards a climax, plus we discuss potential reform of Australia’s A-League and the franchising system.

This week birthday boy Chris Nee and host Gary Andrews are joined by football writer Mark Segal and Graham Sibley from the Sound Of Football and the Football Fairground.

Click here to download or listen to the podcast or subscribe in iTunes.

The terrible and terrifying thing about Progress is that it’s nearly impossible to stop. Progress, once it becomes the overarching goal of the people who decide whether Progress should in fact be the goal, overwhelms everything else, becomes the ends that justify all means, and steers all decisions. Worse, Progress doesn’t care who it leaves behind, who it alienates, what traditions are left shattered and irrecoverable in its wake, or whether it will so fundamentally change the thing it is progressing that that which is being progressed becomes something else entirely in spirit or otherwise. Progress is a cold-blooded killer devoid of conscience or concern, its devastating capabilities shrouded by the positive connotations of the word itself.

Progress will forsake your children. Progress will always favour the new over the old, the blooming frontier to the established territory. Progress takes your existence for granted, feels no urge to do more than patronize to your concerns. Progress is in the eye of the beholder.

Progress brought us to where we are now, with the hum of technology so persistent we have perfectly tuned it out, allowing me to transmit these words to you and the purveyors of the game to transmit images of English football to me. Progress gave us football in the first place, when monied factory owners sponsored teams of men to play a boy’s game, enticing communities from Sheffield to São Paulo to start their own clubs to compete with their neighbours, all in the interest of civic pride. But because Progress does not stop, Progress will wrench our beloved institutions right from under without regard for history or passion.

Progress can’t be bothered with quaint notions of anything, much less those tied geographic happenstance. For me, Progress is a beatific apparition delivering copious amounts of English football — largely accepted as the best kind of football — to my door. Progress lets me partake in the best league in the world(TM) without having to move a muscle. Progress feeds my addiction, and in turn, feeds the coffers of the clubs that have the wherewithal to fill their rosters with great players from all over the world. Progress bends football to make it more palatable to my tastes and point of view, which by virtue of my own geographical happenstance, has no room for nostalgia except in pre-packaged spoonfuls.

From the other side, I can only imagine that Progress is the all-consuming demon, chewing up the basic tenets of what English football is supposed to be, and more importantly, who it is supposed to serve. It becomes more clear by the season that English football is English only in that the games are staged in England; the sacrifices to Progress will not cease as long as the Premier League views faraway lands as “markets” to be conquered and revenue streams to be tapped. The growing profile of the Premier League in places like North America and Asia – being the populous and prosperous places that they are – means the 39th game, the rumours of a cabal of foreigners looking to end promotion and relegation, the elimination of vicinity rules regarding the development of players, and the control of foreign television rights are merely the beginning, nearly 20 years on from the creation of a zygote. Ultimately, it’s about money because everything is, but there’s also a base human instinct at play. Genghis Khan drove his hordes across the steppes of Asia viciously expanding his empire for no other reason than something in his DNA bade him to. Men like Richard Scudamore and Ian Ayre are the modern incarnation of Khan; less civilized, and with the sporting legacy of a nation on the end of their sword.

I am the Premier League’s target demographic. My ties to the cities and towns from where English football emanates is tenuous and abstract. Theoretically, it doesn’t matter to me if Arsenal or Chelsea or United or Liverpool or whichever big club (because it’s assumed I’ll pick a big club, being the removed, and presumably new, American fan) poach talent from every club in the Football League. Theoretically, I’m anxious to be marketed to, ready to spend my greenbacks on shirts and swag and tickets to meaningless games in July staged in my own backyard in stadiums built for another sport. Theoretically, it doesn’t matter if the players playing on my television for whichever big club I choose are English or Polish or Mauritanian. England itself is but a stage on which the drama unfolds; whether football’s beating heart is in ancient grounds built before all-seaters were a thing or is relocated to a safe somewhere in a bunker built and paid for by Rupert Murdoch isn’t really my concern. As long as there is football — meaning, of course, the only football of which I’m expected to be aware, the Premier League itself — I should be expected to remain enraptured.

The NFL sold its soul to the promise of new frontiers a long time ago, but unlike English football, finds its appeal limited and the nut much tougher to crack. As an American fan of American football, I’ve long ago reconciled the slavish devotion the NFL has to the almighty dollar with my personal idea of NFL fandom.

The league’s annual tryst with English gridiron fans in London is only marginally more callous and transparent a money grab than so much the NFL has done before. Because Progress will have a harder time making headway in a world already in love with a different football code, my only worry is that my team will one day pull up stakes and leave the city they represent now for another with a sexier stadium deal. The NFL isn’t going global anytime soon. America won’t matter less to that league in the same way England has come to matter less to the Premier League.

As the Premier League takes a longer view, closer objects, like the very heart and home of their game, England, move into the periphery of its vision. Progress is farsighted. Progress sees Asia, America, and the potential benefits those places can bring to the clubs counting tens of millions of Asians and Americans as their fans, and forgets that they’re part of a greater, interconnected system of clubs that don’t. Progress makes them forget their obligation to history. Progress wants them to conquer, conquer, conquer. Progress sees me and wants to sell me things, even if that means destroying a century of tradition in the process.

We’re all being globalized. For English football fans who care about football, real football, football that comes from England and isn’t merely a “product” trading on the past, the process is the same as the forcible removal of the extremities. For Americans who have fallen in love with English football, any English football, even the kind that isn’t exactly English football as it was and should still be, it’s a glorious explosion of flavourful culture and sport in one convenient package.

Such is Progress.

Jason Davis is the editor of Match Fit USA. You can follow him on Twitter @MFUSA.

This isn’t per se a complaint about how City’s achievements represent a passing of the guard well and truly to whoever can spend the most and hang the rest, although that does play a small part of my lack on enthusiasm (which would have been the same regardless of a United or City victory).

We know that money talks in the Premier League and Sheikh Mansour’s millions have changed the game in a slightly depressing manner. But it’s livable with. Just. And it is a joy to watch a player such as David Silva at the height of his game, and somewhat amusing to see United on the wrong end of a rare pasting.

But City’s millions are just a small part of the reason I’ve felt a larger disconnect than ever from football this season, and why it’s a struggle to care, let alone watch, professional football from Manchester City down to Plymouth Argyle, in 92nd place in the League. And last week my ambivalence turned into something much more.

The main reason is the Elite Performance Player Plan (EPPP) vote, reforming the way youth development is run in England. Put simply, it hands more power to the top clubs to pick and choose their youngsters, especially from lower league youth setups, at much less cost to the bigger clubs.

It’ll also be cheaper for said Premier League (and category one academy clubs) to hoover up young talent and discard if they don’t make the grade, especially now there’s no risk of spending millions on a Champions rather than Premier League ability youngster.

This, for me, is the straw that broke the camel’s back, albeit where the straw is repeatedly rammed onto said back with a JCB.

These plans deserve a thorough critique and analysis explaining why they’re so very wrong and others (twohundredpercent, the two unfortunates, The 72) have already done so. This isn’t what this piece is about. It’s about how I feel. And right now, I feel as if I can’t be bothered.

One of the joys of supporting a lower league professional football team is watching the youngsters come through the ranks into your team. There’s pride to be had in a local lad done good and even bigger pride if this lad should make it and be signed for a top flight club.

It keeps the heart and soul in the community aspect of a club, it gives the club a supply of talent they don’t need to make a quick (and potentially ruinous) purchase on, and gives future stars for the club something to aspire to.

When I grew up, sure I had Premier League heroes. Sure, I dreamt of scoring the title-winner goal in the old First Division. But most of all, I wanted to be Scott Hiley, bombing down the flank from full-back for Exeter City. In later years, I wished I could have been Dean Moxey. Both came through the Grecians youth team. You get the idea.

In fact, for many lower level clubs having a good youth policy is vital to their survival. If a handful of kids make it as a professional, that’s money set aside over the years for developing players rather than spunking it all in one goal on a reasonably big name, who inevitably disappoints. And the money generated from player sales will keep the club stable, enable them to spend more on better coaching for the next generation, produce better youngsters and so on.

And with one vote, that cycle of football is gone.

Yes, there’s an argument (made by Paul Hayward and others) that lower league clubs should change their business models so they’re not reliant on regular sales of young talent. In an ideal world, this would be the case. But years of mismanagement, crises made from chancers in the boardroom and outside influences, and the growing gap of wealth between the haves and have nots, means it’s still a major way for clubs to survive.

Without the income from these sales, smaller clubs are more likely to wither and die. Or become emasculated feeder clubs for big teams, happy to take whatever scraps are thrown their way.

Either way, the gap between Manchester City’s billionaires and the screwed up mess of the Plymouth Argyle’s of this world – screwed because of chasing a World Cup dream, no less, and given up this season by youth players who, if this were three years later, wouldn’t even have their chance to restore some pride in Argyle as they’d be rotting in the reserves of a top flight club who’d signed them because they could.

As I say, what’s the point? What’s the arseing bloody fucking point?

I’m largely happy watching my team in the lower levels, watching us make steady progress and dreaming, perhaps, of a crack at the Championship one day as we (at least temporarily last season) flew higher than ever before. I know we’re not very good, and I’m fine with this. It makes the days of winning all the sweeter and the pride in my hometown team when we do well all the greater.

But at least when this team of eleven journeymen, young pros and old stalwarts take to the field, at least there’s hope of achievement. Or was. EPPP feels like it’s removed all hope of a team like Exeter – or for that matter Plymouth, Torquay, Bournemouth, Rochdale, Aldershot, Hereford, Leyton Orient, Carlisle, Bury or any unfashionable lower league club – achieving anything, other than being picked up and spat out by the behemoth of the top echelons of the Premier League.

What’s the arseing bloody fucking bollocking point in that?

I said this was the tipping point. There are many other things dislikeable about modern football that make the game a less enjoyable place. Each on their own don’t add up to anything more than a creeping sense of growing detachment from a game with its history and meanings rooted in local communities.

I dislike the fact we’re meant to bow before the Premier League as if it is the be all and end all. I dislike the patronising of lower league supporters, as if we’re mad to consider watching our local team. I dislike the growing anger and excessive seriousness that people hold football in – it’s just a game, and a pretty ridiculous one at that. Use it as catharsis and no more. I dislike the fact that it’s not enough to just enjoy a game, we now all have to be able to discuss the use of a false 9 as well. Leave that to those who are genuinely good at informing the rest of us.

I dislike the increasing short-termism of the crowd insisting chairmen should spend millions getting the club to a land that should be rightfully their’s, even if they’ve never played at that level before. I dislike the fanatical myopia of football fans when it comes to their own team, and the fervour in which non-believers biased against their team should be hunted down by baying Twitter mobs of fans from said club.

I dislike that modern football means we should start at 1992 and nothing else. I dislike the hyperbole and hysteria that accompanies a game, every game, these days – there’ll be another one along in a few days time, relax. I dislike that a club is in crisis because they lose three on the spin, yet proper crises are ignore.

I dislike the FA and the Football League for being so cockbollockingly spineless as to let something like EPPP in. I dislike the Premier League for bullying these organisations into it. I dislike the idea of Game 39 or no relegation from the top flight, and it’s naive to think that some owners don’t active want these to happen, they just don’t want to say so publicly. And I dislike having to pay £23 to watch League One football at Stevenage.

I’m sorry. That needed to be said.

The truth is, football doesn’t need me. I don’t avidly consume the Premier League product, or the Football League product for that matter of fact. I buy precious little merchandise and I don’t obsess myself into apoplexy over throw-ins that didn’t go my team’s way but could be solved by video replays.

If I stopped going to football tomorrow, there would be somebody else starting to watch who would be much more vocal that me on the terraces, spend much more on assorted football paraphernalia from Sky through to mouse mats, and would be worth much more in terms of value.

As somebody who just wants to watch a game of football with a cup of hot bovril in the traditional English way, I am largely useless to all but the smallest non-league club who can serve me a good hot beverage.

Modern football is a religion. And I’m either losing mine completely or having a serious crisis of faith.

Yet I don’t feel I’m ready to go quite as far as eschewing modern, top-flight football entirely, at least not yet. I admire the likes of Damon from The Real FA Cup for taking a stand, but the truth is, I still enjoy watching the games in isolation. My love for the basics of game is still there. And, like a smoker giving up, I know I’ll find it hard to resist a quick one down the pub in a social occasion.

But if I’m not there yet, I’m not far off. The knock-down from the Premier League is a drop in passion for my own team, which in turn has led to increasingly joyless afternoons, interspersed with evenings and Saturdays that remind me why I love the game. It’s those I cling to.

And before I headed to bed after writing this piece, I checked Twitter. My feeds were full of excitement and joy at Sunday night’s MOTD2, featuring City’s shellacking of United and Chelsea’s failure at Loftus Road. Like Robert De Niro in New York New York, I turned away into the night. My opinions on the beautiful game have never felt less relevant and more out of step with the times.