Right then, who wants 62,000 together? The swathes of empty seats at English grounds last weekend were calculated to bring a tear to a ticket tout's eye and send an early shiver of anxiety down football's spine.

The game is not in crisis, not yet, but this was an early warning. Already it is clear that Premier League attendances are no longer simply a measure of stadium capacity. Ticket prices have been blamed for the sharp early-season drop in gates; that along with tedious tactics and a confusion of kick-off times. A certain amount of schadenfreude has been detectable. Football has grown too big for its branded boots; about time it had a lesson in humility.

It would be as well to keep a sense of proportion where crowd sizes are concerned. Yes, last season's aggregate Premier League attendances were 12.8 million compared with their peak of 13.4 million two seasons before and the trend may continue apace. Yet the Premiership took nine seasons to top 12 million after starting below 10 million. The boom may be over but it was never going to last and a degree of levelling out was inevitable.

This was what happened after aggregate attendances reached their post-war peak of 41.2 million in 1948-49. By 1959-60 they were down to 32.5 million but stayed in the mid to high 20s until the effects of hooliganism kicked in, quite literally, and drove the crowds away. In 1985-86, post Heysel, the figure fell to 16.4 million.

Last season crowds for the four divisions approached 30 million, a figure last achieved in 1967-68. The rump of the old Football League has enjoyed a steady increase in gates since the Premier League broke away 13 years ago..

That said, the Premiership does appear to be facing an image problem. The glossy novelty of watching matches in the comfort of all-seat stadiums, the legacy of the Taylor report on football grounds which followed the Hillsborough tragedy, is wearing off. Steve Bruce, the manager of Birmingham City, blames an increase in defensive tactics for fans staying away.

"We're seeing empty seats because people are getting tired of seeing one up front and teams just playing not to get beat," he says.

"We have to be really careful because what people enjoy about the Premier League all over the world is the openness and the excitement."

True enough. The world's TV viewers love the English game for its action and drama, much of which is because more mistakes are made than are normally seen in big European leagues. Mistakes, and the alacrity with which they are exploited, make good entertainment. As Ron Greenwood used to say when England manager: "We're best when we're playing each other."

This is changing. There are still absorbing open encounters to be seen but the prevailing pattern is more cautious. The glum scoreless draw shared by Liverpool and Manchester United at Anfield last Sunday was a case in point.

Yet blaming the fall-off in interest on Chelsea having won their first six matches with no goals conceded seems a somewhat facile argument and one which does not take into account the influence of the Champions League on the leading teams and their coaches.

Liverpool first won the European Cup only after Bob Paisley, on succeeding Bill Shankly, had reappraised the way they were playing and introduced a patient, possessive, more measured style.

Similarly coaches such as Jose Mourinho at Chelsea, Rafael Benitez at Liverpool and Carlos Queiroz, Alex Ferguson's assistant at Old Trafford, have striven to produce a style which does not often give the ball away.

On returning to the Premier League with Newcastle, after a season's absence in Spain, Michael Owen feels goals in England have become harder to score. Some would make scoring easier but the game has already relaxed the offside law and is now suffering the consequences as teams defend deeper and in greater numbers.

This is what eventually happened after the original law was changed in 1925, reducing the number of opponents needed to keep a player onside from three to two. The next season goals scored in the First Division went up by nearly 50 per cent but then the centre-half, who was originally an attacker, became a third back and Arsenal were a power largely through excellent defence.

The best games are those which promise goals but still make them hard to score. At the moment too many sides are not prepared to make promises they have to take risks to keep. Clearly some fans have decided the spectacle is not worth the amounts they are asked to pay. Clubs should think about going into the discount business, particularly for children, before not going to football becomes a habit.