Wolves’ Sporting Star columnist John Lalley believes that the Premier League may not be the powder keg that it’s cracked up to be after watching Manchester United.

The Early Bird season ticket offer expires soon and no doubt the majority of fans eligible to take advantage of this deal will renew their tickets once again.

This comes despite the undeniable fact that no-one can accurately forecast which division Wolves will be operating in next season.

And I can’t pretend that I’ll be stumping up the cash because I’m massively excited at what I’ve seen this season in the Premier League.

The marketing executives and the Sky TV pundits would have us all believe that the Premier League offers us unsurpassable quality in the best competition in the world, with so many games touching the highest levels of skill, athleticism and drama.

Maybe it’s because Wolves have lost more than half of their home matches and our opponents have scored exactly double the number of goals at Molineux than we have, but the football I have witnessed this season has hardly set pulses racing.

With the ‘big four’ having all paid us a visit after Saturday, only some of the football played by Arsenal will linger in my memory. Chelsea were functional rather than inspirational, cautious and wary, whilst Liverpool were so devoid of innovation and creativity that even their own fans were complaining bitterly outside Molineux after their drag of a visit in January.

Without doubt, they were the dullest Liverpool team I’ve ever witnessed at Molineux and, with Fernando Torres absent, Wolves had little trouble in subduing them as the match petered out into a turgid stalemate. The goalless draw was certainly a decent result for us, but for any neutral, the game must have been excruciating.

Manchester United at home. This is the fixture that all and sundry point to as the ultimate motivation for any Championship club with aspirations of a place amongst the elite.

United stand as one of the principal reasons why so many of us are prepared to shell out increasingly illogical sums of money for the privilege of watching football.

The biggest club in the world, hell-bent on becoming the first team in Premier League history to win four consecutive titles and in so doing surpass their hated Liverpool rivals and their 18 championships.

But you will have to forgive me for being slightly under whelmed by the experience last Saturday evening. With their top of the bill star-turn Wayne Rooney missing, there wasn’t much stardust being sprinkled around Molineux.

It was a dour affair with their peak of the range aristocrats making heavy weather of seeing off our willing but generally plodding bunch of Championship interlopers. In terms of the wow factor, this sure was no reincarnation of George Best, Denis Law and Bobby Charlton in full cry.

In truth, the match was indicative of much that has been served up at Molineux all through the season.

United? The pinnacle of our game, the brightest jewel in the Premier crown, the absolute tops, and the most striking example of football drenched in money back in town, but was it so fascinatingly absorbing?

Was it so inspiring and uplifting that you simply were left gagging for the next opportunity to get hooked on your latest fix of high-octane adrenaline?

No, it was all pretty ordinary and mundane, like it has been for much of the season and, of course, what made it worse is that we should have got a point!

From the second tier of wanabees trying to break the monopoly of the big four and ram raid their Champions League cartel, Manchester City dismissed us fairly easily without ever looking anywhere as accomplished as one would expect after such prodigious financial investment.

Tottenham were uniformly dreadful and Villa looked anything but special on their visit to Molineux back in October. Throw in such ordinary outfits as Bolton, Burnley, Hull and Portsmouth and the excessive hype and self-congratulation this league generates seems to be based on flimsy foundations.

Just the same, coming up to the conclusion of our second stab at this Premier League lark, I’d much sooner give it another bash than take an immediate return to the wilderness of the Championship, which despite its grandiose renaming a few years back remains a grinding chore we can well do without for the time being.

But a touch of honest perspective regarding the Premier League would do no harm.

On the evidence of the action at Molineux this season, it certainly possesses all the pace, power and athleticism its chief propagandists boast about, but does it really have that depth of class and such a reservoir of pedigree quality to justify the average £1million plus salaries enjoyed by its players?

The likes of Rooney and Arsenal’s Cesc Fabregas are exceptions rather than the rule and great players by any criteria.

But below their level of genius, this league carries a host of competent and solid professionals – no more no less – who should consider themselves the most fortunate group of footballers lucky enough to have ever played the game for a living.