brummie

I absolutely agree on all counts.

Has anyone got any of those funny pics of cats with LOLZ I AM EATING UR COMPUTER!!!11!! and what not that they can post?

I think football (ie top flight football) will have to undergo a very real crisis if it is ever to return to its local roots. When you hear stuff like that Game 39 proposal, it is really flaunted in our faces that we're not the people who matter any more, it is the mass audiences in the Far East who make the tv rights so valuable. So valuable that the league wanted to introduce an extra match which would, at a stroke, destroy the validity of our league being based on every club playing every other club twice - the last vestige of the "level playing field" gone in the name of money. As a supporter, I don't particularly feel the benefits of this being the richest league in the world. My season ticket still costs me a lot of money, I'm watching the same four teams win pretty much everything, even breaking into (for one or two seasons only) that top four is seen as an achievement of the size of Burton Albion winning the FA Cup. Talking of which, the FA cup, in the new Wembley, and yesterday we have 25,000 fans of both sides getting tickets, meaning 40k for stuffed shirts from the FA and corporate sponsors. The entire game is wrong, wrong, wrong from top to bottom, and ideas like following the Barca line of membership (ie great ideas based on noble morals) are fucked from the start The entire game is drowning in a sea of wrong.

Nah. English football is about as local as McDonalds or Visa, and it is never coming back, unfortunately. How many industries can you see extremely rich people investing massive chunks of money only to find that someone else considerably richer than them has washed up, prepared to invest even more than you can, and thereby blow a massive chunk in your plans. The whole thing now is about as much a sporting event as Britain's Got Talent, and concepts like a Barca style membership scheme, though incredibly noble, just will not work.

Isn't the problem that people want an owner that will be able to put money into the club (i.e not Ashley or Freddy), wouldn't a fans' consortium do just the opposite? We wouldn't be able to plug the club with money if needed, which it probably would. I don't see the parachute payment and the money from player sales being enough to stablise us. Yeah, I know and I agree. The hypothetical Real/Barca scenario would be more beneficial in the long-run. Even if we are condemned to the Championship for a couple of years, if we can become financially stable and viable, then promotion into the Premiership will mean that we can actually spend money too because of our fanbase. We're not like other teams who need someone to shoulder their spending sprees. The infrastructure at the club is still very strong. We've got a short-run financial problem. If this can be solved, then a Real/Barca style ownership is possible. The Barca model is fine, if you're a club with the money printing ability of Barca. The fan ownership model is an ideal, and it is hard to pick at the principles behind it, it would be a beacon for the rst of football in many ways. But, you;d still be competing against clubs bankrolled by rich owners. 10k average extra punters through the door over your competitors makes little difference these days. That's why football is intrinsically fucked. Manchester City, 250m transfer budgets, buying everything on the planet capable of standing up, etc etc etc.

Shepherd back? Holy fucking shit. You lot know better than I do, but as an outsider, holy fucking shit.

Yes, Acorns again. Kudos not just for Lerner, but also for Doug Ellis (through gritted teeth) as he started the partnership between them and the club a while back now. Sheff Wed have done the same this year n all. Some kiddies charity or something is going to be on their shirt. Smaller scale but Walsall have also gifted theirs to a childrens' hospice next season

Yes, Acorns again. Kudos not just for Lerner, but also for Doug Ellis (through gritted teeth) as he started the partnership between them and the club a while back now.

I reckon we should be loaning out Barry Bannan and Marc Albrighton, both of whom look incredibly promising. Bannan spent the last few months of the season at Derby, and did very well.

BINGO! That makes the full house of every single club in England now having been linked with Larsson at some point in the last two years.

I don't believe for a second we are interested in Bassong, let alone at that price. Not that hes not a good player - he is (although 15m? dear lord) - but we need an experienced head to play alongside Cuellar or Davies, not another up and coming youngster.

Not that I ever like making excuses for mackems, but he was probably slightly confused because Carew is hardly ever fit to start so it could seem to someone (who doesn't watch religiously) that is possibly a "third choice striker." That's a fair assessment (except for the "hardly ever fit to start" bit, which is a humungo-exaggeration). I love him.

I must be living in different times, because Sunderland, although they've won very little in, say, my lifetime, are a club awash with history.

I had a look at that SMB forum yesterday There was a thread started by some bloke who reckoned they should make a move for John Carew, as he's "Villa's third choice striker"

Point of order. Man U have been, and not that long ago. Sorry, I love reminding myself of that.

I like Mowbray, and think he's got potential to become a really good manager. However, play good football as much as they did try to do, his refusal to adapt the way they play when even a one-eyed man on a galloping horse could spot that his players simply weren't good enough to play like that and survive suggests a bit of a weak point. Stoke might be the anti-football, but - and this is horrible to admit - Pulis did a much better job than Mowbray, as he kept them up.

Saw something the other week saying The Championship is the league with the 4th biggest average attendances in Europe behind the Bundesliga, La Liga and obviously The Premiership. Championship average = 17,875 Serie A = 24,562 It's the 4th best out of total people attending which is to be expected considering there's far more games played. My mistake, didn't realise that England, Italy and Spain were the only 3 leagues to play football in europe. Where on earth did he imply that?

Saw something the other week saying The Championship is the league with the 4th biggest average attendances in Europe behind the Bundesliga, La Liga and obviously The Premiership. Isn't it the fifth richest league in the world, as well?

I read a reference to him on here the other day, with a link to his website, and I swear, it honestly took me about 10 minutes of puzzled reading to work out why it wasn't the quiffed, loved-by-Guardian-readers, Jerry Springer opera writing comedian who you were going on about.

Hang on, is it the little cheeky one, or the taller mongy looking one we want, the one who went blind in Byker Grove? sorry

Shit, I might choose to support Barcelona and go to a Barcelona forum instead. After all, I did shit in a bog in the service station just south of Tarragona once.

I don't want to join the hounding, but it isn't "his team has won the CL" in the same sense it would be if yours or mine did. It is like when I hear Man United fans with cockney accents about what it means to them. By comparison, it means nothing if you just choose to latch on to some successful club. Why do these people never seem to become Mansfield Town or Wigan or Bournemouth supporters at the age of 8? Not talking about Messi here, but I absolutely hate gloryhunters. They are the Quisling maggots of the football world.

Well sometimes that might be ok say for example if a person bought a Brazil shirt for the 2002 World Cup final and wore to cheer them on as they beat the Germans!!! nah, that's another manifestation of the problem we have in this country of harking endlessly on about the war (when countries which suffered infinitely more than we did have forgotten about it).

I don't have a problem with people wanting to watch good football either. My problem goes with the ones you've described at the end of your post. That kind of behavior is just sad and worrying, and it happens every fucking world cup at the pubs in Oslo Half the people who wear Brazil shirts and dance to that samba shizzle in the stands during Brazil games at World Cups are actually Scandinavians, anyway

The PL isn't even the best league in this country *expression of solidarity* *gets coat*