stevegrant

I would normally stand up for the rights of a journalist - whether local or national - to state his opinion in his written work, whether that's for or against a football club's policies, decisions, etc. However, in true football fan style, I'm going to be fickle on this occasion and say "**** him".

Ian Ayre at Liverpool is the only one who was stupid enough to say it publicly earlier this season. Liverpool's PR since Dalglish returned to the club has been ****ing horrendous I'm sure there are a few clubs who would think they'd get more money out of individual agreements, but there's a counter-argument which suggests that the very existence of the collective agreement which ensures that a large proportion (50% of the domestic contract and 100% of the overseas contract) of the broadcasting revenue is distributed evenly between all 20 PL clubs is what ensures the value of those contracts is so high in the first place. Without that apparent balance (the imbalance we actually witness is arguably more to do with Champions League revenue IMO), the league wouldn't appear so "competitive" to the outsider and therefore not as valuable as a marketable product.

At the moment, Spanish clubs negotiate their own TV deals, hence why Barcelona and Real Madrid are streets ahead of everyone else in terms of the amount of broadcasting revenue they bring in. There's been talk for a while now that La Liga wants to change to a collective deal similar to the one used in the Premier League, but naturally Barca and Real are opposing it as they'd lose out financially.

Peterborough was always likely to be a popular away game, it's the only ground in the Championship with terracing. The only downside to the game is that it's midweek, but we've already shown this season that that isn't really putting people off. Peterborough can't sell tickets in the Moyes End terrace to home fans if the away team don't fill it (and they don't have the fanbase to do so anyway), and when West Ham went there a couple of weeks ago, they sold all 4000-odd terrace tickets in the space of three days, which would suggest they had them all in one go. There's no reason why Posh wouldn't give us all the tickets in one go if we wanted them.

Kappa are Pompey's "retail partner" - basically the club sold the rights to all their merchandise to Kappa a couple of years ago, so they run the megastore(s?) and there's some sort of profit-sharing arrangement.

Worth bearing in mind that, apparently, the reason there are loads of creditors listed on there with no value of debt is that new ledgers weren't created on the club's accounting software when NewCo replaced OldCo, so the creditor list is just a printout of all suppliers past and present. Not 100% sure that's right, but time will tell.

Should be able to do the upgrade at the weekend

Greg Halford.

St John's Ambulance owed a further £5544 Monthly wage bill of £1.8m, more than £21m a year!

Neither, he's from the Midlands. Think he might be a Villa fan.

Sorry, what?

Apparently there are now another 1000 terrace tickets on sale. No ****ing idea why they don't just put them all on sale from the beginning really

I bought mine online the first morning they went on sale and they only arrived on Saturday.

This was updated to 150 earlier this week (Tuesday, I think) on the morning of the deadline for buying the coach tickets.

Er, read it again...

1978.

Because it's a load of ****?

How appropriate: http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/31/why-groupon-is-poised-for-collapse

Where do I sign?

The Golden Share is the be-all and end-all as far as Football League clubs are concerned - without it, you can't start the season, so it's possible that the FL could basically blackmail them into accepting a points deduction at the start of next season in exchange for the share (if they can get that far), after all that's essentially what they did with us and Leeds.

Except the Football League can apply and vary their own rules at their ultimate discretion where they feel appropriate. I would imagine they never envisaged that a club who had been so royally ****ed would carry on where they left off having (somehow) managed to get a CVA agreed and then make no attempt to pay any of that money back. Just like they never envisaged that a football club would put their parent company into administration rather than the football club in an attempt to avoid the statutory 10-point deduction. It's a logical assumption that the creditors of the old Portsmouth FC wouldn't have agreed to a CVA comprising a total payout of 0p in the pound, which is now what they're likely to receive. If they'd attempted to exit administration on those terms two years ago, they'd have been hit with at least another 15-point deduction, so why should that not apply retrospectively?