Wullie

This.

Good draw that.

Two great goals.

Walked past the ground for first time in absolutely ages earlier, felt quite the pang of sadness. Realised it's 2 years to the day that I set foot in the place.

Aye he's mixed him up with Davor Suker.

Wish I'd gone with my gut and gone for Hughes next to go after last week, could have had 7/1.

Tell us more.

It's a really strange comparison No surprise after Tron said the other day that 'Bellamy relied more on the sheer power from his left foot' He did, how many times did you see him pass it into the net or dink one over the keeper? He had a great left foot and usually put his head down and belted it towards the goal in one on ones. Keep digging.

Norwich above us now.

Fuck.

http://www.kumb.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=165509&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=580 Worth a giggle. EDIT: was, anyway

Norwich level.

Love his post-match player reviews. "Anita did ok, he ran around" "Mitrovic was poor today, he wasn't running around" "Ritchie was sensational, he ran around" Insight you only get from having played the game.

West Ham

That or we're just not playing that well in the first ten minutes.

The trouble is that if you start allowing clubs to provide access to matches on an ad-hoc club-by-club basis, you're getting closer to a La Liga type system where the TV money pours into specific clubs and everyone else is left with fuck all. The Championship/Football League has tried before to provide more access to games and it took an entire TV network down with it. The demand simply isn't there even in the UK, outside of a few clubs with big enough fanbases to support it, so I suspect the one camera setup will remain for the foreseeable future.

I assumed tgarve's objection was to "can't see anyone breaking into it for a sustained period" given who won the league out of the blue. Got a point tbf, depends on your definition of a sustained period I suppose.

Pretty sure the rest of the world can watch the Premier League at 3pm, no? Your second point simply ignores the reality of the situation. You think fans at North Shields just support them and not Newcastle? We used to be able to watch every game, now because of your stupid laws we only get one. I'm sure they do, and they would still go and watch North Shields even if Newcastle were on tele, is my point. None of the laws have changed though. Aye, they have for international audiences. Not the ones to do with the 3pm blackout. It's a rule imposed by Ofcom, whose influence abroad is absolutely zero.

Pretty sure the rest of the world can watch the Premier League at 3pm, no? Your second point simply ignores the reality of the situation. You think fans at North Shields just support them and not Newcastle? We used to be able to watch every game, now because of your stupid laws we only get one. I'm sure they do, and they would still go and watch North Shields even if Newcastle were on tele, is my point. Some would, plenty wouldn't. It would also be far more difficult to get kids into lower league football if not just Newcastle were on the box, but Chelsea and Man City who it's hard to keep them away from in the first place, especially in areas without top flight football. With all due respect, it's got absolutely fuck all to do with the rest of the world how English football operates and the mind boggles that you think it does. The PL might have whored itself out to the highest bidders worldwide but that's up to them, there are more clubs happy to keep them from having even more power and money. I could start supporting an Australian team tomorrow, that doesn't give me the right to start demanding they play their games in the middle of the night for my convenience. The whole argument that it'll make no odds is bewildering to me - "We've got by far the deepest and strongest pyramid in world football. Why don't we change it to be more like other countries whose lower leagues are a total irrelevance? I'm pretty sure it'll make no difference at all."

Pretty sure the rest of the world can watch the Premier League at 3pm, no? Your second point simply ignores the reality of the situation. You think fans at North Shields just support them and not Newcastle?

Exactly. If you're looking for stats from another country that replicate five professional leagues and countless semi-pro/amateur leagues kicking off at exactly the same time, I suspect they don't exist.

While I'm on a subject that I've always had a bee in my bonnet about, and apropos of nothing really: There's always the possibility that the PL will go the way of La Liga, with all ten games staggered over the weekend away from everything else for TV purposes. I think that would be really damaging to our football culture long term too - possibly even moreso than just televising PL games at 3pm actually. IMO, one of the things that has kept English and Scottish lower league football so relevant, is that they all (mainly) kick off at the same time. There's something really brilliant about that. If you're watching the PL results come in, you're also watching the National League results come in, and the Scottish second division, and that has always been the way of it. That doesn't happen anywhere else, and I think it's part of the reason that leagues below the top flight in other major footballing nations become an irrelevance, stuck out of the way when only fans of those clubs are paying any attention at all. If you're a Bayern fan wanting to know the 2. Bundesliga results, you have to go out of your way to find them when they're played in the early evening on Friday, and Sunday afternoons, away from the Bundesliga. If you're a Man United fan keeping up with the Premier League games on Saturday, you're finding out the Woking result whether you like it or not. I've always loved that. It keeps all five main tiers in the general public consciousness. I pay a (relatively) decent amount of attention to leagues below the top flight around Europe when I'm betting and when you do that, you realise how amazing the English pyramid is in how much coverage there is of even the non-league compared to the third tier in countries like Spain and Germany. I think the synchronised kick off times are a big part of that. Not sure how we got onto this topic considering we're in the Championship anyway like. At the QPR game, like every Football League game that isn't televised/chosen before kick off for extended highlights, there was one camera. That's part of the deal with being relegated, and it's tough shit really.

Such as? How will Premier League teams being on television more ever benefit Hartlepool/Macclesfield/Wycombe? Many of these clubs already exist on the breadline, and we've seen a few go out of business in the last few years, like Darlington and Chester. It only takes a small dip in attendances to push small clubs over the edge - and they would dip, no question. There'd be a gradual decline of new supporters, and an immediate decline in the supporters of Premier League/Championship clubs who go casually to lower league clubs when their side is away from home. I used to go to Hartlepool regularly with my dad, and the 10 year old me would have been having none of that if Newcastle were on the TV at the same time. It's not scaremongering to suggest that clubs like Gateshead/Tranmere/Leyton Orient will see a hit if Newcastle/Liverpool/West Ham are on TV at the same time, it's bloody obvious.

Even in Sweden, every second division game is on TV these days. It's pathetic they aren't even being filmed with more than one camera. How do Swedish teams in the 2nd division manage to get a crowd when the games are on TV? * Don't answer affordable ticket prices. Obviously crowds aren't great, don't know what the average would be mind. Not strange considering the level would be around league 2 at best. You need to be a real fan of the team to bother with it, with how bad the quality is. Don't think championship crowds would suffer much from being televised. Are there really any evidence from around the world with crowds going down because of TV? It's incredibly shortsighted as it seems to only think about the people in the general vicinity who attend matches, not the fans all over the country and world who would like to see their football club play. I just hate that Sky is sat there recording every single match and cutting in to show goals live, so technically they are just creeping about with the feed. God, how awful. It's got very little to do with that anyway. It's to do with protecting the quite extraordinary depth within the English football pyramid. It's to try and prevent, for example, the huge amount of clubs in the Greater Manchester area from haemorrhaging new fans because the kids want to stay at home and watch Man City on the telly, and judging by the amount of people watching third and fourth tier football (and below) in England and Scotland at 3pm on Saturdays, it works extremely well in doing so. "No soul in football", you're so wrong it's frightening. The soul remains at the games that the blackout is there to protect.