Are we more Stoke than Chelsea?

IT IS eighteen months now since Andy Gray and Richard Keys wandered into a debate about the respective merits of the English Premier League and La Liga during a league match between Manchester City and Everton.

The pair, who had yet to fall from favour at Sky Sports, were discussing the latest Ballon D’Or nominees during a break in the action when Keys asked the former Scottish international whether Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo would score so prolifically in England.

Gray’s response, that they would “struggle in a cold night at the Britannia Stadium”, prompted guffaws and gasps in equal measure and is still trumpeted as a prime example of the self-smugness that surfaces sporadically amongst those charged with promotion of ‘the Greatest League in the World’.