A lot of talk this past off season has been given over to how money is effecting the game.  Specifically, most of it has been aimed at the high-spending practices of Real Madrid and Manchester City and how they have inflated the prices for players.  While all of this is true, and up to the individual fan to decide if they believe it to be positive or negative, they have changed something that effects the land scape even more in my opinion.  This morning I did my regular check of the footy news of the day and took a count.  A full TEN, more than half, of the headlines on the biggest site I went to were about transfer talks, player speculation, and firings/hirings.  Now, I know this happens often where we get into this stuff.  It’s prevalent during the transfer windows and the off-season (which we’re just coming out of), so this is not a completely unexpected situation.  But it’s got a bit of a different flavor to it this year.  We’re a couple of weeks deep in the Premiere League season right now and all the biggest stories are about who’s coming, going, or staying.  The soap opera has taken it’s turn towards the increasingly campy scripts that happen when the show knows it’s dying.  The money is so big (and that’s just the declared money) that people are just as interested in how much is being spent on each player and who’s spending it as they are in the drama on the pitch.  Just a thought.