The New Season: Can Football redeem itself?

As the new season approaches, all fans look forward, with increasing anticipation, to their team's first kick-off. But this season has a little bit more importance than most seasons. Why? Well simply because of what happened at the World Cup and last season in general.

The World Cup, in simple terms, was awful. The top players were awful, the refereeing was awful and out of the 32 teams that qualified only three (Spain, Argentina and Germany) went out to attack and pass the ball with purpose.

Last season as a whole in the EPL was sub-standard too. Chelsea won it on experience and efficiency in front of goal. Arsenal most of the time faced walls of defenders when playing. And that was the major concern: how most teams looked to defend deep with ten men and rely on set-pieces or mistakes to score.

So, after what happened last year, football, in my opinion, is facing a crisis. Your typical team nowadays is a negative one that uses dirty or rough-house tactics. I think this is mainly because of the pressure put on managers. They know that its win at all costs or face the sack. Their inhibited by a fear of losing and afraid of being extravagant. So incidents like what happened to Ramsey and Eduardo are seen as collateral damage in their eyes.

So I've asked the question can football redeem itself? Can it renounce the cynicism that it has been afflicted by? Or will matches like the World Cup Final become the norm, where players foul, dive and wave imaginary yellow cards in an attempt to gain the edge in the match?

To be honest I don't think it can this season. I see free-flowing, attacking teams like Arsenal in the minority, fighting against the anti-footballing sides of managers like Sam Allardyce and Tony Pulis.

If football is to become 'the purist's game' again then quite simply an entertaining team has to win the league and the lesser lights of the 'Wengerball' way in the league like West Brom and maybe Blackpool need to stay up.

So what does everyone else think? Do you agree or do you have a different view? I'd love to hear from either way.

N.B. I won't be this negative when talking about Arsenal but I will try to be realistic.