±±¾©Èü³µpk10

Attendances at Barclays-sponsored Premier League matches have dropped by about 6%, Premier League chairman Dave Richards said yesterday.

The top league, which is dominated by super-rich Chelsea and a following pack of big clubs such as Arsenal and Manchester United, has come in for a barrage of criticism for being dull and in hock to TV.

Premiership manager Alan Curbishley said yesterday that saturated TV coverage of football was a "big problem" and called for club chairmen to "sit down and come up with some answers to take us through the next 10 years". The Charlton manager is not the first to hit out at TV coverage.

The problem is also plaguing the lower leagues as well. To combat the problem there, football's lower league clubs have today pledged free entry for "hundreds of thousands" of kids to matches.

The Coca-Cola-sponsored Football League, which represents the three leagues below the Premiership, has organised and is marketing the "Fans of the Future" initiative.

Forty of the 72 League clubs, including Leicester City and Coventry City, have introduced a scheme offering free entry to children accompanied by a paying adult.

The League's chairman, Lord Mawhinney, congratulated the clubs "on being far-sighted enough to commit themselves to an initiative that will deliver real results for generations to come".

Football League chairmen and managers are unsurprisingly among the voices criticising the Premier League, with Millwall chairman Theo Paphitis saying it had lost touch with reality.

However, even Premier League figures have been critical. Charlton manager Curbishley pointed to the level of TV coverage of football as something that the game's governing bodies should address.

"Anybody can sit down on Sunday and watch a Premiership game at 12 o'clock then another game at two o'clock, a Football League game at three o'clock, then a top Spanish game at six o'clock followed by another Spanish game at nine o'clock. I think that is a big problem at the moment," he said.

TV coverage is currently a hugely sensitive issue for the Premier League as it faces a legal tangle with the European Commission over the structure of its next TV rights deal.

It sees giving exclusivity to a broadcaster as its most valuable card, but the commission is bent on ensuring that the rights are shared between broadcasters.

If you have an opinion on this or any other issue raised on Brand Republic, join the debate in the .