toonarmy

There are plenty of passionate fans in the US to easily sellout a game or a few games, and then the teams would continue to make a lot of money as those fans newly exposed to those two teams would now start buying extra stuff and following those teams from abroad. Beckham's first game in New York in the MLS sold out an 85,000 seat stadium in a matter of hours. Think of how many European ex-pats are in the US that would love to see a meaningful game, as well as the 40 million Hispanics in the US that are all soccer crazy and would show up for any real football match. And the thing is, most of the US fans have almost zero loyalty to the MLS teams and would all rather see two foreign teams play on US soil than a foreign team play "their" MLS team. Just because all 300 million people in the US don't care about soccer doesn't mean there aren't a few million football mad residents-easily enough to support a real game in the US. Now I don't think that they should move a Premiership game either-the season is grueling enough. Fans are easily desperate enough to want to see ANY meaningful game, even if its something like a community shield or even an early round Carling Cup match (cup matches are the best idea, that way teams don't really lose too much of the all important home-away structure in premiership play) or whatever. As long as it wasn't a meaningless friendly where none of the starters played for real, the match would be hyped and sold out extremely fast. And it wouldn't piss off English fans as much either. Random point: The NFL also has an equal number of home-away games for each team, and with only 8 home games a year, losing one game of home revenue/home-field advantage to play a game in London would be a big blow for the Miami dolphins (if they were any good at all this year). But they were willing to (forced to) make that sacrifice, since every team will eventually make that sacrifice over the next few years. So it's certainly doable for soccer too, but whether they should is an entirely different matter.

what did ashley do?

great strike by mcfadden there. solid.

I think the "period of adapting" is an interesting one. I can see it from both sides. Often, people form opinions of how the OF would do in the Premiership based on their current squad. If they had guaranteed Premiership revenue and exposure then i'm pretty sure their squads would be considerably stronger than they currently are. But, on the other hand, would they get crowds of 60,000 if they weren't virtually guaranteed a victory every week? History would suggest not. Valid points. Also they would not be guaranteed or as good as Champion League football. I don think they should be allowed in the Premier league, if they were then should start at the farthest point of the pyramid system. Also think it is ironic some Celtic fans don't class Scotland as the own country, they vote SNP, yet want they want the team they support to be in the EPL, talk about confused!!!! Just an interesting thought, that since it is now officially the BPL (barclays premier league), the association with being English is slowly being cut off. I'm sure that wasn't the intent by Barclays, they just wanted to be more prominent most likely, but as the Premier League slowly begins to be less and less "English", it paves the way for the Scottish teams to merge in some fashion eventually.

Mary Queen of Skirts was a Celtic fan ? Aye, I suppose she would have been. WTF its got to do with the question posed however..... He attacked the keeper - and you think thats nothing ? ? ? Hahaha. I thought that was hilarious. I could try to explain the joke, but that always just takes the fun out of it. Good old misspellings.

mike dean=rob styles

to me, the most surprising result was fener taking down inter. maybe it's not that shocking, but still.

I can't see or hear the games here at work. Were they good goals, or simply a result of perfect passing and/or shoddy defense? i.e. was Owen just lucky to be in the right spot at the right time, or were they clinical strikes? The latter would bode well for the future.

sorry i forgot wigan was playing today. i thought it was just us taking target practice mostly.

how can rozy get it? wigan never had the ball in our half, i didnt hear rozys name mentioned even once, never saw him. owen imo

of all things, i wouldnt have guessed owen would have rushed it so much. touch, timing-maybe, but patience?

wigan keeper looks ridiculous with that hat

good save by harper

sure, we lose players-though hopefully we should have replacements to fill in. but our opposition should lost plenty of players also. I don't have the time to check up exactly who right now, but it's not like they will be able to throw everyone at us too-not many teams have no important african players now.

oh i see david edgar came in for smith a few mins ago. nice.

blackpool just scored in the 120th minute to tie it back up, then wins 7-6 on pks to knock derby out

carr out 6 weeks. no word on ramage yet, but its definitely torn ligaments, out for many months at least

to be fair to robinson, it did take a deflection off tevez

9 yellows this game

liverpool losing composure

looks like blackburn has tied up arsenal

liverpools midfield has dominated too, chelsea has barely even seen the ball

well done torres

been all liverpool so far in the first 13 minutes

Anyone know how much money we actually sold him for? I read a couple of articles, and saw no mention of the transfer fee. Did we get the full 8 million, or just the 6 million up front or what?