Hyped-up Sky are right, it's really great to be back in Premier class

Steer away from questions like, Did you see the blatant penalty given away by your defender?' and Wenger is a man worth listening to. This weekend he pointed out the philosophical choice presented to English football at its highest level.

"England has to make a decision," he said. "Is the Premier League here to prepare the English national team or is the Premier League here to be the strongest football product in the world? . . . [Either] we kick the foreign players out . . . or we go for the strongest league, because with all the big rich people buying clubs we have the opportunity to do that."

I chewed over Wenger's comments while watching the Community Shield — or as it should be known given the amount of branding plastered over it by a certain fast-food company, The Ray Kroc Memorial Plate For Fat Kid Guilt-Assuasion. There were lots of World Cup players on the field. But there was also a great fat Premier League season round the corner.

The match was shown on Sky. Their take was straightforward. In terms of the Wenger dichotomy, there's no doubt where they stood yesterday. The Greatest Sporting League In Any Recorded Field Of Human Competitive Activity (TM) is back. It's back! Did you hear me? It's . . . ". . . Back!" barked Richard Keys when the coverage began. "And we're all desperate to put the miserable summer behind us."

The message behind every second of Sky's coverage yesterday was that debacle of international football was a disappointing load of old balls, the World Cup was best forgotten and the Premier League (which is BACK!) is unarguably and totally brilliant.

When the cameras panned to Fabio Capello in the stands, Jamie Redknapp pointed out that he had lost his aura'.

Discussing Paul Scholes's 50-yard pass to set up Manchester United's first goal, Keys said England supporters would be cursing their luck that the 35-year old only played club football now.

And whenever Wayne Rooney so much as looked at the ball, everyone chorused words to the effect of "he had a crap summer but you can bet your Benson & Hedges that now the Greatest League In The Milky Way is back, he'll be giving it the White Pele thing all over again".

On and on it went. Bash international football in general and England in particular. Drool all over the club game. Hype up the forthcoming Premier League games being shown exclusively live on Sky in HD, 3D and now via the weird dream-state-injecting machines that they use in Inception'.

Now, of course, Sky would get so excited, wouldn't they? They have been the irresistible force behind the way we have watched and discussed top-level football since the 1990s.

They have pumped money and creative energy into the game, glamorising English football with the result that the players are now the richest in the world and the clubs are desirable playthings for vulgar rich men on yachts and sharp American financiers.

Yet all summer Sky has been, like the Ancient Mariner, becalmed on an undrinkable sea.

While the BBC and ITV showed more World Cup football than they knew what to do with, Sky had to make do with training ground footage and rolling news exclusives' about Francis Jeffers's amended training schedule. Of course they're going to big-up the Premier League over the national game.

But just because they're self-interested doesn't mean that Sky are lying. In fact, they're right. Watching Chelsea play Manchester United — the two favourites for the incoming championship — yesterday was infinitely more enjoyable than watching England, or indeed most of the other teams that contested the World Cup.

Or, to turn this back to Wenger's dichotomy: it is extremely clear, as the new season looms, that English football has already paid its money and taken its choice.

The choice is to have a good, watchable Premier League with a lot of teams, a frantic fixture list, plenty of sponsorship and TV money and lots of expensive foreign players at the top clubs.

The cost to English football at large is that when we return to Wembley on Wednesday night for an international match between England and Hungary, no one will care. Not the players and not the fans. Not the managers and probably not even the hot-dog vendors on Wembley Way. And least of all Sky, since the match is being shown live in boring old 2D on boring old ITV.

Not for the first time am I glad that I am not Adrian Chiles.