Demonstrations of player power are nothing new in football

For Tevez and Terry, read Spurs' Danny Blanchflower

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I wonder if we've ever had a better season to demonstrate the contrasting effects of player power than recent events at Chelsea and Manchester City.

Yet it would be wrong to see this as reflecting the fact that players are now super stars, and because of the money they earn, they have acquired power that players of previous generations did not have. That is moonshine. How modern players exercise the power may have changed, but players have always had powers, particularly players at the top of their profession.

The most potent example of this was of course Danny Blanchflower, the captain of the great Tottenham teams of the early 6os. Blanchflower will always be remembered for those classic lines that define the game, "The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It is nothing of the kind. The game is about glory, it is about doing things in style and with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom."