FloridaMarlin

Exactly the audiences that the whole Sky/Premier League axis is aimed at, not just in the UK but increasingly overseas. The Premier League self-styles itself as the "world's greatest football league" for the main purposes of being able to sell itself in China, the Far East, and elsewhere. Richard Scudamore, as the PL's chief executive, is mainly charged with marketing 'the product' and bringing in as much money as he can. Nothing wrong with that, but the rabid pursuit of money streams has been at the price of any football moral soul that clubs had. Clubs moan like hell that players play too much, but they are on the first plane to Kuala Lumpur or Hong Kong to take part in Premier League pre-season tournaments abroad (Asia Cup, anyone?) The PL has been led by the nose by Sky (and to a lesser extent other broadcasters) since the day in 1992 when clubs left the Football League to form it. Sky have been good for the PL, but if it suits Sky, it won't hesitate to knife its old football chum in the back. Look back in this thread and I waffled on about a Sky-backed world league. As money gets tighter all over the world, the battle for the shrinking pot will heat up. Setanta's collapse has shown Sky there is effectively nobody else out there who can compete with them (not even Disney-owned ESPN). Thre've now got the PL where they want them, and don't be surprised if their next contract bid is worth a lot, lot less. That could lead to an end of the collective agreement and the break up of the PL as the Big Four realise they could do better by negotiating their own deals - just like Real Madrid and Barca do in Spain where there is no collective agreement. Sky will go with those who they think will provide the biggest audiences and that might be all those Man Utd/Liverpool/Chelsea wearing hordes in the Far East. How many Hull City/Bolton/Blackburn shirts do you see in KL? The overseas market for the 'world's greatest football league' is not interested in seeing the vast majority of its games which feature the likes of Fulham v Sunderland or Aston Villa v Wigan. And Sky are increasingly wondering if those games are an incumberence they don't really be want to saddled with. The first cracks are starting to appear, and it will be the players who drive wedges into those cracks and widen them out. The top earners are already moaning about the tax levels in the UK and it's interesting to see that all the big transfer business this summer has been done by clubs outside the UK.

Complete waste of time. He wouldn't have a clue what to do with it. David Conn at the Guardian would have been a better bet.

Going back to the original title of the thread (it was only three pages or so ago, so you might remember) I'm just puzzled why the litigious Rupert did not take the Guardian for a few quid, as he did The Times. By publishing an apology the Guardian performed what is known as an Offer of Amends, which can mitigate against those who might seek financial damages for defamation. No doubt, Rupert is content with The Guardian's grovelling apology. The Times' refusal to do likewise cost them £250,000 for that Martin Samuels column. Incidentally, can anyone confirm what charity did benefit from the £250,000 damages Rupert won?

Anil Bhoyrul - a journalist you can really trust. Anybody remember the Daily Mirror's 'City Slickers'? "Anil Bhoyrul is a former Daily Mirror business journalist who was investigated over the so-called 'City Slickers' share tipping scandal along with the paper's then editor, Piers Morgan. Bhoyrul has since been employed by Richard Desmond's Express group, where he has written articles under the byline Frank Bailey. [1] On 7 December 2005, Bhoyrul and his former Daily Mirror colleague James Hipwell were convicted of conspiracy to breach the Financial Services Act 1986. Bhoyrul was sentenced to 180 hours of community service on 20 January 2006. Bhoyrul currently resides in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where he works for Arabian Business, a weekly English-language magazine published by ITP." (Wikipedia)

You make your own luck in football.

Er...I'm not seeing too many quotes from Strachan in that article.

La Sarria, former home of Espanyol, Barcelona's other team. Best football match I have ever seen. Never, ever tire of watching it.

The big fear is that Man Utd and Chelsea will certainly be looking to break away, especially Utd after being swamped by Real Madrid in the transfer market this summer. The collective bargaining agreement for the TV cash cow that Premiership club have seen as a godsend for so long, is suddenly being seen as a millstone around their necks by Man Utd. There's no collective agreement in Spain (or Italy) which mean Real and Barca can cut their own deals; hence they can flog their TV rights to whoever they like for whatever they can get. This won't be lost on England's Big Four, particularly Man Utd and Chelsea. I've said on here before the big fear is that the Big Four will start some back door negotiations to free themselves from the shackle of the collective deal, and the likes of Sky and ESPN (the big new players on the block) owe no loyatly to Prem clubs. If the Big Four decide to go off and play somewhere else - for example a European or even a World League - TV will follow them, and everyone else can go to hell. Premiership clubs outside the top four will suddenly not seem attractive propositions to the money men, and the money will evaporate from the game. The Rest will have to make enormous and painful adjustments before football eventually returns to some sort of sanity.

Covering the local club -especially Newcastle - is a thankless task. You're never going to please all the people, all the time. For every one who criticised him for being up Freddy's backside, there would have been two who thought he was bring too harsh. I'm not saying the story in The People is dead right. Looking at it, it's patently written from a Newcastle angle and is more a criticism of Newcastle's prospective owners not contacting Shearer. Saints part in the story is more incidental, a small, veiled threat that Toon's new owners had better get hold of Shearer's number fast. What I found risible was the outright dismissal of the piece as absolute rubbish.

Alan Oliver is no joke! He covered Newcastle for the Chronicle for nearly 30 years, and is generally recognised as one of the top football writers in the country. His contacts in the north-east are beyond compare. He is one of that rare and dying breed, a fearless journalist who always put the story first to the point where Newcastle Utd genuinely feared him, and treated him with the utmost respect. Sir John Hall, Freddie Shepherd, Mike Ashley all made sure that their first task on taking office was to make sure they had a good relationship with Ollie. I'm not saying he gets every story right, every time, but you would be foolish to completely rubbish his stuff.

Dyslexics of the world untie! Would he be the dyslexic pimp who bought a warehouse? Or the dyslexic devil worshipper who sold his soul to Santa? (Cue heaps of stick from bad spellers with no sense of humour).

Worldwide financial services group - Fulcrum Asset Management? Gavyn Davies to the rescue?

Oh dear. For a start, can you really trust anyone who writes: "....A Austrian consortium..."? They're getting their Swiss and Austrians mixed up - bit like The Echo did. Easily done, I suppose. They all come from countries which have lots of tall pointy things.

Red Bull is an Austrian company. But then you could hardly expect any Echo reporter to know the difference between Swiss and Austrian. Both countries having mountains, and stuff.

So is Abramovic. And the Glazers.

Don't be too surprised it is a negative piece. The author, Graham Otway, is a big p****y fan. He loves to write downbeat pieces about Saints.

Are we being bought out by Basque Separatists?

Wishful thinking by Plymouth fan Tony Husband, who has had it in for Saints ever since they took Sturrock. He is currently relishing Saints downfall. So much for BBC impartiality.

If the takeover happens before the publication of the fixutres, it will be A). The BBC keep teams in their respective divisions until the fixtures are published, at which point they are 'accepted' as being in their new division. Someobdy else will tell us when the fixture lists are published.

If we are indeed approaching the last fence, we have. The "long jump", by which I presume you mean the Water Jump, and The Chair are only jumped on the first circuit. HTH

The talk of Sydney makes for an interesting comparison. One of the big successes of Sydney (now overtaken by time, but revolutionary when it was built) was Darling Harbour, an old run-down, former Dockland area, divorced by a couple of miles from the city centre, not unlike Ocean Village. Also like Ocean Village it was revitalised with bars, shops and flats but what marked it out was the monorail which connected it to the city centre. The monorail was the vital lifeline that provided the connection with the bustling nerve centre, without it Darling Harbour would have frittered away. The envisaged monorail would have done exactly the same for Ocean Village, unfortunately it was killed off by the king of the NIMBYs, cllr Jack Candy. He is the man who single-handedly condemned Ocean Village to a long, lingering death by cutting the artery that could have fed life-blood into it. On another note, there is a saying in Italy: “Milan earns, while Rome spends.” It alludes to the fact that Rome has little or no big industry connected to it, but as the capital, sucks up all the money that northern Italian industry makes. It has been a similar situation with Southampton and Portsmouth. As the home of Britain’s Navy, Portsmouth was always a ‘government’ town. The biggest employer was the naval dockyard, which supported a network of support industries. Naturally, the Dockyard was funded by central government. In contrast, Southampton has always had to stand on its own two feet. The docks were built by railway companies, and Southampton was never a ‘government’ town in the same way Portsmouth was. When the Dockyard was hit by savage government cuts in the 70s and 80s, Portsmouth’s industry and structure collapsed. As a city, it spiralled into decline and as one of Europe’s poorest cities (in terms of income per household, it ranked with Naples) it qualified for Special Status help. All manner of government aid was channelled into Portsmouth. In contrast, as much of Southampton’s industry was private it never qualified for the sort of assistance Portsmouth did, and was largely left to its own devices. What Southampton managed to do was diversify. As traditional industry shrunk, so the service industries grew, which is why Southampton is home to many regional headquarters of banking and insurance companies (yes, I know Portsmouth has got some as well). If Portsmouth has overtaken Southampton in some aspects, it is because they cleverly invested the government money it qualified for as an economically deprived area. Southampton had never been classed as an economically deprived area (try telling that to all the Ford, BAT, Vospers, AC Delco, Pirelli, etc workers who have seen their workplaces disappear!) and so has never enjoyed the sort of government life-support that Portsmouth had. Any success Portsmouth enjoys as a city is largely built on government funding. Couple of other things. My missus is from Portsmouth, and certainly nails the lie that all girls from there are *****rs. Secondly, if my memory serves me I think Southampton Docks is now Arab-owned. Wasn’t ABP bought out by an arm of the Dubai Investment Corporation?

"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." Harry Lime.

Law 5 states: "The referee shall act as timekeeper and keep a record of the game." More importantly, the catch-all: "The decisions of the referee regarding facts connected with play, including whether or not a goal is scored and the result of the match, ARE FINAL." Apply that to Law 7: "The allowance for time lost is at the discretion of the referee." and you will see that any complaints on matters relating to the officiating of the match are doomed to failure. The basic premise of football is that the referee's decision is final. If he says: "I played four minutes additional time, according to my stop-watch," nobody, not even the FA, can argue with him. The principle is that the referee has primacy, and the FA would not dare to do anything to undermine that. And nor should they.

Sven-Goran Eriksson's agent is Athole Still. He also represents Gordon Strachan and George Burley, amongst others. He's a former international swimmer, and like most of the tp-line agents, started out in showibz circles. His first sportig clients, if my memory serves me correctly, were Duncan Goodhew and Sharon Davies.