stevegrant

What dates would they be available? I believe they've already got some games arranged already, so we'd obviously have to fit in around that, but it would be great if we could get something done there.

Yep, basically, although the events almost certainly didn't occur in that order, as they wouldn't have agreed the deal to buy the club without having negotiated terms with Aviva and Barclays first. Well as far as I'm aware, those developments haven't actually begun yet, so I guess there's no need to worry too much about where the funds are coming from right now as nothing's being spent on it.

It always used to work fine. Seems as though those in charge of actually running the system at St Mary's these days don't have the faintest idea what they're doing. Quelle surprise.

You'll find it conveniently listed under "amounts falling due within one year" and "amounts falling due within more than one year". It won't. Similarly, it won't say that the money WILL be turned into equity either. Taking the prudent approach, which you would think that we would be looking to take more often than not given the way we continue to gallop around these pages on that moral high horse, it's a loan that will have to be repaid at some point until such time as it is converted to equity. If you're going to try and play Accounting Top Trumps, at least make it look like you have some sort of non-blinkered view of the situation.

Also, seems as though Cotterill's been offered the job at Nottingham Forest. I'm not sure whether I'd want him to go or not. With the players at his disposal, they seem to have underachieved (although injuries and suspensions have played a key role, but I'd argue that's his own fault for the "quality over quantity" approach he took a year ago), and I guess it's a bit of a lottery whether the next mug to fill the hotseat will get more out of them or not. I do wonder who would take on the role right now though... Perhaps an emotional homecoming for this genius:

Not strictly true. That £20m also covered the settlement of the mortgage and overdraft with Aviva and Barclays respectively. The "purchase" at the time was dressed up as a £13m deal, but every single penny of that went into the debt settlement.

Anyone with half a brain knew that Birmingham are a financial basket case. Hughton can't seriously claim that he was unaware of how bad the situation was when he was interviewed/appointed

Cardiff, Middlesbrough and Hull each picked up 8 points in September while we only got 7. Can't say I'm overly bothered by Mowbray getting the award, Poyet got it in August and Brighton only picked up 4 points last month.

Pleat's really good in the papers, mainly as you don't have to hear his voice and mispronunciations, his tactical knowledge is spot on.

But then we run the risk of having the likes of Brian Woolnough as a prime-time regular. That, frankly, is an even more horrifying prospect. Also, let's not forget that a lot of national newspaper journalists have as many conflicted interests as the ex-pro pundits, desperate to appease players and managers for that lucrative ghost-writing contract, etc.

Neville's very good as a studio pundit on the Monday night games, but as a co-commentator he's not great. Wilkins is awful

And you've only just noticed this?

Point of order: BSkyB makes absolutely nothing from Premier League games being broadcast overseas. The Premier League makes in the region of £500m a year from doing so. It's important to distinguish between the Premier League and Sky, even though the two have been intrinsically linked since the PL began in 1992.

But that returns us to exactly the same situation as we have now. Sky cannot enforce such a clause, it's the very definition of anti-competition. They probably will buy up the pan-European rights and sublet them to local broadcasters where they see no business sense in entering themselves, but they won't get an even spread of revenue across the EU as countries like Greece simply don't have the money. At the moment, Greek broadcasters pay less than £10m a year for PL coverage (and that gets them all 380 games), Sky would be lucky to get the same again in the next deal, assuming a pan-European deal would cut it down to around 150/160 games (380 wouldn't be viable as most of the games would be unavailable to the UK market because of the blackout). The same problems would still exist, it would still be cheaper for you or I to buy a Greek decoder and subscription and install it at home (perfectly legal) than to get a subscription to Sky Sports. Of course, there's also the problem that Sky wouldn't own all of the rights anyway, due to the last legal case they were involved in in Europe, which resulted in a ruling that no one broadcaster could own the rights to all of the games, hence ESPN have a token gesture of 23 live PL games a season.

The EU accounts for around 10% of the total non-UK broadcasting revenue (and about 5% including the UK), so not a massive amount in the grand scheme of things. However, the UK alone accounts for nearly £600m a year, which is around 55-60%. If the rights are to be sold as one across Europe, it seems plausible that the value of UK rights will be diminished as BSkyB will no longer have "exclusive" rights to sell to customers in the UK. While Sky as a whole (including its Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia operations which are also massive - albeit not quite on the same scale as BSkyB) may acquire the majority of the pan-European rights, because someone in the UK could buy a decoder and subscription from Greece or Romania for a fraction of the price as BSkyB charge, that potentially has an effect on the price Sky will be willing to pay. Anyone thinking that it'll drive down the price of a Sky Sports subscription is, sadly, very much mistaken.

We have that situation at the moment, as you can acquire a decoder for a European satellite broadcaster and watch their coverage of games that fit into the UK "blackout" period (i.e. Saturday 3pm kickoffs), but when the rights go pan-European, it's almost certain that those games will be removed from the rights packages for live games. Of course, you could still get the content from non-European broadcasters, but you're then in danger of copyright infringement prosecution.

The Sky product in the UK might be devalued in pubs for the remainder of the current contract (to summer 2013), but it'll become a pan-European deal from that point onwards, so little Greek broadcasters won't have a hope in hell of getting the rights, unless they sublet from someone like Sky, ESPN or Canal+.

I don't think this ruling will actually make much difference in the long term. Sure, for the duration of the remainder of the current TV deal (i.e. until summer 2013), you'll be able to watch Greek coverage of the Premier League for much less than the cost of Sky Sports, but from the 2013-16 deal, the Premier League will almost certainly sell the rights on a pan-European (or at least pan-EU) basis. Currently, they get around £1.7bn over three years for UK rights, and £375m over three years for European rights (which accounts for only 10% of the foreign revenue). Also worth bearing in mind that the current UK deal covers only 138 live games per season, whereas the foreign rights currently allow all 380 games per season to be broadcast live if the local broadcaster chooses to do so. Any new pan-European deal, which would obviously include the UK, would remove all of the Saturday 3pm kickoffs from the European deals, but as a trade-off, would probably up the number of games shown in the UK, perhaps to 150/160. Not entirely sure how they'll fit all of those in, but I'm sure they'll find a way. As these are now combined rights for the whole of the EU, including the biggest market in the UK, the local broadcasters won't get a sniff and it'll be left to the big guns, i.e. Sky, ESPN and Canal+, to fight it out for the rights. As there would be genuine competition between them, that could see the price rise rather than fall. Worth bearing in mind that the situation remains unchanged outside of the EU, so a broadcaster in the Middle East will probably still be able to show all 380 games live. However, the likes of Karen Murphy won't be protected by EU freedom of trade legislation as the decoder and content would be arriving from outside the EU, so could be pursued by the Premier League for copyright infringement.

Nor does it take a sane person to realise that the club's wall of silence to the very person who organised the fundraising and presented the thing to the club to use is wrong on many levels.

Or for you to have racked up more than anyone else despite claiming indifference to the subject.

Akin to phoning ClubCall for accurate news content

Data roaming would suggest that you've been using Orange's data services while abroad. If so, yes, it's ridiculously expensive. Somewhere in the region of £3 per megabyte unless you pre-buy a data package. When I went to Switzerland in the summer, I bought a 30MB roaming bundle (domestic data use is included in my contract) for £15, which took the per-MB cost down to 50p, but I underestimated how much I was going to use and ended up paying an extra £90 for the 30MB over that original bundle amount I used. If you've not been abroad recently, they're billing you incorrectly.

Why was it agreed that it would be at the club's discretion if/when it was ever shown the light of day again after the ML tournament when the majority of it was paid for by the fans? Further to that, what percentage of the cost did the club contribute towards it?

To be fair, I don't think there are many who have ever doubted Wigley's ability as a coach. It was just as a manager that he was proven to be utterly inept

I thought he'd ballsed up the one against Birmingham the other week, it hit a bit too much of the post for my liking