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Yesterday’s Manchester derby was one of the most pulsating games of the season complete with a shock scoreline. It was a great advert for the Premier League. And let me strangely unmoved and semi-disinterested on the consequences of what was probably one of the more significant results of the recent era. It was the same the night before, when Match Of The Day held minimal appeal and the Football League show is likely to remain unwatched.

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.

Tags: Elite Player Performance Plan, EPPP, Football League, Game 39, Manchester City, Manchester United, Premier League, youth development