I was watching Peter Crouch's podcast the other day. He was interviewing Ian Rush and asked him if he found it annoying that since the Premier League started, all time scoring records like his are now totally forgotten.
Rush made the point that what he found disappointing was that club records like league titles still seemed to be counted, regardless of whether they were won in the old First Division or Premier League, but when it came to individual player records, history only seems to start with the Premier League.
I think he made a very good point.
It seems even crazier when you consider that Alan Shearer, who is always touted as being the Premier League's top scorer, actually scored an additional 65 goals when it was still Division 1, but those goals aren't counted as they were scored before the start of the Premier League and therefore are stricken from the record!
There are so many things to like about the Premier League, but there are even more things to dislike, and personally I feel this deletion of football history prior to its invention is the worst of them.
Here's a link to the relevant clip:
https://youtube.com/shorts/GBSjHDqOu7Q?si=7b5iNyA54E5eW_RW
What? There was football before Sky?
Quite a lot of my stats are "Premier League related",apologies. But I recognise football existed before 1992 and try to throw in stats from 1907 onwards!
The creation of the Premier League in Association with Sky Sports has been instrumental in the commencement of the demise of Association Football as we once knew it.
Hence the reason why true football supporters deciding to go and watch football in the lower end of the English Football Pyramid where they can watch proper football at an affordable price.
It is a little concerning that the PL and Sly Sky, together with the the likes of NBC/Comcast leading the charge in the US, are looking to re-write stats history by ignoring pre 1992 stats.
This has always been an issue though, and it is on the back of previous stat issues surrounding the ever-changing divisions over the history of the game in England.
Why they felt that rebranding in such a way was necessary was pure marketing, though the reality is we still have the top 4 'pro' leagues (EPL, EFL, Div 1 & 2), and for historical stats purposes this is how I tend to relate such historical stats. Changing the number of teams, and the change from 2 to 3 points for a win also provide similar challenges, and need adjusting when doing such comparisons. (I am so glad the idea of giving 2 points for as score-draw was never adopted though - that would have been another layer of complexity to deal with)