 FANTASTIC! My beloved Baggies are at Wembley, and like every other fan in the Brummie Road on Wednesday night, I was jubilant as we boing boinged to victory. The joy of reaching the new Wembley is diluted, though, every time I hear a reporter drone that the play-off final I'm going to see is "the most valuable club match in the world" with £60million at stake. How can that be right? Winning promotion is all very well, but surely a game to climb out of the old Second Division should never, ever be worth more than becoming English champions or European Cup winners. It is, though, because although the Premier League prides itself on being "fresh" and "modern", in truth it's nothing more than a throwback to the worst excesses of Victorian Gradgrind capitalism. It's motto should be: "To those that have, more shall be given. Those who have nothing can get lost". Younger readers may find it hard to believe that when the FA sanctioned the creation of the Premier League in the early 1990s one of its key targets was improving the England team. That's right - they really claimed that pumping clubs full of satellite TV money and encouraging them to import the best overseas stars would somehow allow homegrown players to flourish. All of the big clubs now have academies bursting at the seams with talented English youngsters but whose route to the first team is blocked by what Alan Sugar called the Carlos Kickaballs - overseas mercenaries ready to flit at the first glimpse of another fat signing-on fee. Of course the creation of the Premiership had nothing to do with the FA's power-crazed desire to out-muscle their traditional foe the Football League. It was also completely unrelated to the desire of the greedy bigger clubs to hog all the game's revenue for themselves. And the Pope is a Protestant. For the first decade and a half of its existence, the Premier League could at least pretend that it was the best show in town, with star-studded teams playing thrilling football in packed stadiums. Now even that illusion is starting to fade. The dominance of Chelsea and Manchester United has become a murderous stranglehold killing off interest lower down the league. We all know that if Albion beat Derby and get to the "promised land" they will hold out survival as their greatest achievement. Let's be honest, it's the same for Blues and to some extent even Villa. Exciting? Really? A pair of warm slippers by the fireside and a hot mug of Ovaltine hold out more sense of adventure. No wonder gates at clubs like Blackburn, Manchester City, Bolton and Wigan have started to nosedive. It's a decline that's unlikely to be reversed next season when even more games will be televised, and fans will have to contend with all those "daft 'o'clock" kick-off times. Don't get me wrong. I'm looking forward to my trip down Wembley Way but I also know that defeat isn't the end of the world. Promotion is a passport to a world of big money, large egos, higher prices - and only the tiniest chance of glory. | 
