If there's one man who can change football for the better, it has to be Will Hutton.

His polemic ‘Greed will be the death of football' is long overdue. Brilliantly argued and concise to the point, it is a rallying call for all of us who love the game and watch in despair as only three or four clubs win year on year.

The consequences are considerable: go to any “sports” shop and your chances of buying your favoured team strip (other than the oligarchs) are none, this is replicated throughout the world. Go to some far-off land like Thailand and mutter “Manchester United” or “Liverpool” and you are likely to get a smile. Say “Derby County” and you are more than likely to get a blank stare. Indeed you don't have to go as far as Bangkok to find people searching their brains for the name of Derby County. London will do. If you're lucky, you might get something along the lines of “Oh yes, they're in the second division, aren't they?” Or perhaps, you might get a smile and a: “Oh yes, Brian Clough”. All of this translates into dollars or pounds.

It also means that newspapers and magazines focus almost exclusively on the oligarchs. To its shame, MoTD long ago gave up pretending any balance of reporting on Premiership games, and as a licence fee payer, I resent that. Their spurious argument, of course, is that they are there to reflect the wishes of the majority of viewers. Well, here's a statistic: the four clubs so far have had a collective average attendance of 221 thousand. Another eight clubs (including Derby County) had a collective average attendance of 244 thousand – there are still another eight that I didn't count. So actually the vast majority of fans are watching teams other than the oligarchs. And here's another statistic: we (Derby) have the twelfth highest average attendance – but is that reflected in minutes on MoTD – oh no.

This kind of “Hollywood” effect, whereby local culture is slowly destroyed to be replaced with an alternative pseudo-American culture that actually doesn't exist (it's only a movie – stupid!) is already having a major effect on our game. What it means is that clubs like Derby County, Reading, Fulham, or Bolton will never have a chance to win the Premiership. It means teams like Aston Villa, Everton or Newcastle are scrabbling around for the left-over crumbs on offer (Europe). It also means that if we're lucky enough to have an astute management, sufficient money, a great backroom team and dedicated players, we stay up.

This oligarchy ensures that the top four get the best players in the world playing for them. And that often means them buying players simply to stop other teams having them. Wenger praising Pearson makes my heart sink – it's a higher variation of Spurs buying Huddlestone. So the response is to develop negative tactics (a la Wigan) to try and stifle other teams – which is boring. Highly effective with most teams but it's killing our game. Overall Premiership attendances are down – any increases are because of Utd increasing their capacity and Arsenal moving to the Emirates.

Which is why I get so irritated with people who moan about Billy Davies, about Peter Gadsby, or the players not being good enough. Just look at the reality. It is akin to having a corner shop next door to Morrison's or Tesco's with a Somerfield mini-market round the corner. See if you can survive – never mind make a profit. You won't. Not unless you have a largish family prepared to work for nothing, day and night, seven days a week to help keep your head above water.

And that's exactly what everyone at Derby seems to be doing. Working as hard as anyone possibly can. But hard work sometimes isn't enough. And the average person, having worked hard all week, doesn't want to pay through the nose to watch some more hard workers. We want to see some breathtaking bits of skill from our team – not just the MoTD favourites.

And that's why Will Hutton is so important. As an influential journalist who has the ear of some eminent Cabinet Ministers, it is vital that his message gets across that our game needs some high-level political action to restrain these oligarchs.

Then watching Reading v Derby won't mean a fairly sterile match in which chances are at a premium with one goal deciding the outcome and some fans thinking: “Sod this, this ain't what I want to spend my money on.”

Photo: Action Images

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