Wenger lashes out at death of glory game

IT is one of the fundamental tenets of advertising: tell consumers the same thing over and over again and, eventually, they will believe it.

The Premier League appeared to take that principle to heart in remorselessly trumpeting itself as “the world’s most exciting league” but Gloucester Place’s well-heeled executives are now discovering another of marketing’s Ten Commandments: that any slogan will begin to lose all meaning if repeated often enough.

This could yet be remembered as the season the Premier League lost its lustre. The credit crunch has already left a clutch of clubs facing an uncertain fiscal future, with sponsors beginning to examine their options and downgrade the lucrative deals signed during the boom years.