Wullie

There's an elephant in the room that nobody wants to confront and that is the demand from supporters for every game to be available to view. I've argued on here many times over the years in favour of the 3pm blackout in English football to protect attendances down the pyramid that often rely on, for example, Newcastle fans going to Gateshead, Blyth, wherever, when we're playing away. It's inevitably met with a response that my view is archaic, we should all be able to watch whoever we want, whenever we want and nobody's too worried about clubs further down - "I don't go to watch North Shields when Newcastle are away so probably nobody does, it's not a problem" Yet this week I've seen so much argument from many of the same people that money, Sky has already ruined football etc etc. The fact is that we can't have it both ways. If we want to be able to watch every game in every top flight and in Europe, then that is going to generate significant revenue. We don't seem to mind paying for football but we're not very happy when the people in football get rich off it.

Who gets the money generated if not the players?

Keane is always strangely long, he doesn't get loads but he picks up about as many as your average centre half, he's usually about 8/1, 15s is absolutely ludicrous. He's had 4 in his last 15 appearances. Betfair have him 13/5

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/22/sports/soccer/super-league-soccer.html

I suspect fans of other Scottish clubs would tell you to fuck off and leave their league alone rather than marching in with a St George flag and pronouncing that you're going to improve the quality of football here at Stenhousemuir.

I loved Viana's pass for Bernard vs Chelsea.

Bring back the Anglo-Italian imo.

Already edited my post to that effect, didn't want to exclude another of my favourite pieces of border related football trivia!

One of my favourite little known football facts is that the most successful club in Wales (TNS) play their games in England. Also the border runs right through Chester's ground, different parts of the ground are in different countries.

Seems a bit mad to go planning this pie-in-the-sky Old Firm scheme yet again when there's quite a significant possibility that Scotland won't even be part of the country in ten years time.

In the 3 PL games on Saturday, this is currently 267/1

I generally agree with Barnes but this point that what they tried is no different or only marginally different to what Sky and the PL did in 1992 is so lazy and just plain wrong.

Big card prices for an Atwell game so I'm having a few again. Jorginho/Burn 25s Mount/Bissouma 40s Rudiger/Dunk 33s Alonso/Veltman 33s

Only Arsenal and Spurs left now, they're clinging onto the prize.

UEFA should absolutely tell them they're scrapping them, don't even let them get the leftovers.

Tell me about how powerful these clubs are again. They've shot their bolt and blown their leverage over UEFA for years.

This is such a great point, wow, I hadn't thought of that.

This is how I feel, I really think call their bluff on this, throw them out of the domestic leagues and see how much interest they actually get in their vanity project (without the current European champions or the runners up.) As I said the other day, football is quite a dull game for about 85 out of 90 minutes, if you're lucky. It's what at stake that makes the later stages of the CL so exciting. Nobody goes out of their way to watch a group stage game between Atleti and Spurs and after the novelty has worn off, even less people will want to watch that fixture in this thing.

Liverpool's owners are trying to rip up English and European football and Jurgen Klopp wants us to feel sorry for his players cos someone left some shirts in their dressing room. Boo fucking hoo.

MNF is always a really good watch.

Phillips is definitely on. EDIT: ah you must mean Nate. I've got Kalvin.

Nowt else on tonight so had a few doubles. Quite surprised at the high prices with Taylor in charge, he's a bit hit and miss but handed out 7 last week in the Roma game. Ayling/Kabak 25/1 Thiago/Roberts 28/1 Alioski/Milner 33/1 Robertson/Phillips 50/1 No value in the Liverpool shots but Costa/Harrison/Dallas are all really long.