James Lawton: Premiership loses perspective in its desire to make instant history

Real Madrid will put the self-regard of the Premiership under the microscope again at Old Trafford next week, but before this one passes there is surely a need for at least one cry of indignation over the organisation's increasing habit of trying to make instant history.

The installation last Monday of various Premiership teams and players and, for heaven's sake, commentators, of the first decade of the league's life was variously wrong-headed and offensive, but, worst of all, was the implication that somehow you can draw a line between what has happened since the bawling, greedy infant was bundled into life in 1993 and all that went before.

You cannot do it without suggesting that the Premiership represents a new dimension of football, a level of competition which can only be assessed according to its own values and achievements in its own lifetime. This is nonsense.

What is peculiar to the Premiership about Alan Shearer's feat of scoring more than a 100 goals for both Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United? This was enough to give the Newcastle captain two awards: domestic player of the decade and outstanding contributor. But did it carry Shearer, along with a league which had no basis for life other than pure avarice, to some new plateau of achievement? Not when you consider for a moment the deeds of Jimmy Greaves, who had scored 100 goals for Chelsea by the age of 20, went off to Milan and scored in every game he played in a brief, unhappy stay, and then returned to London to smash the 100 mark in his first three seasons for Tottenham.

If a Premiership player one day surpasses the extraordinary achievement of Dixie Dean in scoring 60 goals in a league season, will he then be announced as the first Premiership player to hit such a target, and will that be meant to suggest a uniqueness that really does not exist?

When the admirable Martin Tyler is voted Premiership "commentator of the decade" are we expected to forget that he is the commentator of the house – a position which would no doubt be threatened, like the jobs of so many broadcasters, if he strayed too far from company policy. This is not meant to slur Tyler, a man with a passion for the game who – and this more properly demands recognition – has managed not to compromise that feeling with too much of the cheer-leading that marks the work of so many of his colleagues. No, it is just to say that he happens to be an employee of Rupert Murdoch – the man who owns the game, and whose vote of approval is really the only one that counts.

The voting which shaped this week's awards was done by 750,000 visitors to the Premiership website, most of whom managed the breath-taking oversight of failing to recognise the most influential player of the last 10 years.

They elected seven Manchester United players to their team of the decade, which was a reasonable enough reflection of the club's domination of the league – as was the choice of Sir Alex Ferguson as manager.

The elected were Peter Schmeichel, Gary Neville, Denis Irwin, David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, and Eric Cantona.

Of these, the cases for three were overwhelming. Peter Schmeichel was the foundation of so much of United's success. Eric Cantona, you have to say, however much you subscribe to the famous theory that he had a genius for "rising to the small occasion" and that his impact on European competition was slight almost to the point of non-existence, was both a talisman and a catalyst. Paul Scholes, according to no less a witness than Ferguson, has been the club's second most influential player.

Second, of course, to Roy Keane. The Premiership awards were drastically short of credibility at the outset. When they managed to work through their overblown ceremonials without mention of the Irishman's name they became utterly ridiculous.

It is true that Keane was absent at the climactic moment of the Premiership's supreme, short-lifetime achievement. That was Manchester United's defeat of Bayern Munich for the 1999 European Cup in the Nou Camp. But, short of putting the entire team on his shoulders, Keane could scarcely have done more to carry United to their second success in the world's leading club competition. Keane was a giant in Turin when he rose up against Juventus, who seemed to be cruising into the final. Keane gave United drive and iron. He lashed them into the capacity to win the big prize, and when you review the Premiership's team of the decade there is a stunning irony. It is the absence of the one player who might – at least in the arguable judgement of anyone capable of looking back beyond 1993 – have been a candidate for an all-time team drawn from English league football.

In its relentless self-aggrandisement, the Premiership only invites harsh comparisons.

Imagine, for example, a match between the Premiership's team of the decade and one drawn from the ages of England's club football.

Though there are so many options, a team drawn from just 30 years before the inception of the Premiership might read : Banks, Cohen, Charles, Moore, Duncan Edwards (who, like Charles, could play anywhere) Mackay, R Charlton, Giles, Baxter, Greaves and Best. Or then again it could be: Shilton, Madeley, J Charlton, Hansen, Wilson, Bremner, Haynes, Souness, Cliff Jones, Law, and Dalglish. This game is open-ended, but the point is surely fixed. You cannot take a fragment of history and shut out the rest. It means that you lose points of reference and judgement. You lose perspective. You lose sense.

You also make yourself vulnerable to the savage dose of reality Real Madrid have already administered once this month and threaten to repeat in a few days' time. Hype will never be a substitute for history. Not if you want to live in a real world.