Andrew Fifield On the Premiership: As headlines go, "Blackburn slash ticket costs" is not likely to have England's kitchen tables spattered with spluttered coffee and cornflakes. On the face of it, it is the sort of news story that makes readers hurriedly flick through to the quick crossword.

But Rovers' decision last week to review their pricing policy in response to the vast swathes of empty seats that regularly greet teams trotting out at Ewood Park hints at a graver trend: a simmering discontent among Premiership supporters who, for too long, have been taken for granted by the people who run their clubs.

Blackburn should be commended for their stance, although those that are deeming it a proactive, interventionist measure should ponder why it has taken them so long to act, given crowds have been tumbling for years. But certainly some of their Premiership peers - Manchester City, Wigan Athletic and Middlesbrough, to name just three - should take note, for the disillusionment is not confined to east Lancashire.

It is incongruous, perhaps, to be examining the reasons for the Premiership's fading appeal when, on the surface at least, it seems never to have been in ruder health. The cream of the continent's playing talent now views English football as a serious sporting challenge rather than a cash cow to be milked dry just before retirement, while European success is no longer an anomaly.

There is even a title race to savour this season, courtesy of Manchester United's surprise renaissance and Chelsea's inexplicable appetite for self-destruction, while the new £625-million deal for overseas television rights will reward even the league's no-hopers with the sort of booty that would have been unimaginable a decade ago.

This is all grist to the mill of men like Richard Scudamore, the Premier League's rapacious but undeniably effective chief executive, and you could almost hear the saliva pitter-pattering on his microphone when he announced in an interview last week that "this deal takes us on to another level".

Scudamore is right, of course, but if he thinks yet another whopping great load of cash is going to banish the general disillusionment with the Premiership, he is sorely mistaken.

Yes, the new TV deal will make the top clubs more bloated than ever, but in doing so, competitiveness - already stretched to breaking point by the financial advancement of the Big Four - will virtually evaporate. The gap between the Premiership and the Championship will become a void, with the result that only a select band of clubs will harbour realistic hopes of establishment in the top flight.

But this is what the Premier League wants. It is so much easier, after all, to retain an element of control over a choice few rather than having to deal with gatecrashers: it is why Europe's notoriously snobby, self-interested G14 still refuse to recognise that paragon of noveau riche yobbishness, Chelsea.

Even so, Scudamore's claim last week that one of the motivating forces behind the new TV rights package was that "clubs who have gone down have been so shell-shocked that they have not often bounced straight back up" was breathtaking in its narrow-mindedness.

Why should the Premier League feel fiscally obliged to support clubs who fall through the trapdoor? If they did lose their status, it is for one very simple reason: they were simply not good enough. And if they subsequently suffer financial traumas, then tough: they should have managed their finances better.

It is no coincidence that the clubs who have plummeted into obscurity after a few heady years in the limelight - Bradford, Leeds, Derby, Sheffield Wednesday, Crystal Palace - are also the ones who have shown quite breathtaking incompetence when it comes to account keeping. All five clubs were blinded by the Premiership PR, believed they were bigger and better than they really were and paid the price.

It does not have to be this way. In 2000, Charlton showed that it was possible to bounce back at the first attempt, provided a tight grip was maintained on the finances and faith retained in the management.

Following that blueprint, Watford - who have realised that promotion probably came a season too early - should be well placed to mount a comeback next season.

This is the acceptable face of bouncebackability. Clubs who acknowledge the inherently fluctuating nature of footballing fortune and safeguard their long-term health deserve to be rewarded, but the Premier League should not be doing that job for them.

If Scudamore and his cronies are not careful, the Premiership - which, for all its ridiculous self-importance, retains a verve notably lacking in many of its major European competitors - will be transformed into a closed shop: dull, repetitive, utterly predictable. And then it will not just be Blackburn fans who lose interest.