August 10, 201015 yr That's why FC United was formed.;)i got noting whatsover against these guys whatsover... I wish them every success... even a few blues go along to their games ! ;)
August 11, 201015 yr i got noting whatsover against these guys whatsover... I wish them every success... even a few blues go along to their games ! ;) Well the way City are going, it might be more than just "a few" before long, unfortunately.:(
August 11, 201015 yr I can see a conclusion coming from the Southampton photo ban, the shirt sponsor either wanting their money back or forcing them to lift the ban, imposed by Kim Jong-Il
August 11, 201015 yr Hey Mark, what happened against Shrewsbury :P 3-nil up, to lose 4-3obviously ran out of athleticism! :P
August 11, 201015 yr obviously ran out of athleticism! :P http://instantrimshot.com/index.php?sound=rimshot&play=true
August 12, 201015 yr Despite my taunts about or biiter rivals.... I would not wish this on them, its bang out of order that season ticket holders at OT have to submit their Credit Card deatils so when UTD have a cup game at home their cards are charged for a ticket to the game whether they go or not.. You will suprairsed... However since you have never been too old trafford or even been near Manchester I would never expect you to understand... how has that got anything to do with what i said haha. what do you not wish on them? i was just saying how debt despite its negative connotations isnt entirely bad, its a part of big business. i could of been talking about any of the big clubs (except chelski who thanks to their russian owner have very little debt at the moment) and what makes you so sure that i have never been to manchester? i dont want to drag this on im just a little confused at what you're getting at.
August 12, 201015 yr Chelsea still has massive debt, but it's in the form of a long-term zero interest loan, but if Roman gets bored and wants his money back than they will be in the brown-stuff
August 12, 201015 yr I don't know how things work there in Europe, but I gotta ask: Do you guys give a damn about South American football? 'Cause here it's possible to watch many european leagues.
August 12, 201015 yr Sometimes Sky gets the odd South American football game on the telly, but not a lot else.
August 12, 201015 yr Honest answer: No, not at all. It's kind of weird that we love watching Brazil and Brazillian players, but couldn't care less about the clubs they came from.
August 12, 201015 yr Sky Sports does well covering FIFA qualifying games in South America as they start 3 years before World Cups begin, but other than that, only EPL and La Liga features extensively for club coverage in the UK. The best South American players play in Europe anyway!
August 12, 201015 yr It's really weird you don't care about South American clubs. Do you see my avatar? Well, that's the logo of the club I support, SC Internacional. We qualified to 2010 Club World Cup, and that's something you should care about, since we'll probably face Internazionale in the final.
August 12, 201015 yr is it? What is a person that thinks football is boring doing in a football thread?
August 12, 201015 yr What is a person that thinks football is boring doing in a football thread? I believe you've mistaken me for someone else.
August 12, 201015 yr It's really weird you don't care about South American clubs. Do you see my avatar? Well, that's the logo of the club I support, SC Internacional. We qualified to 2010 Club World Cup, and that's something you should care about, since we'll probably face Internazionale in the final. In the same way that the Brazillian league matters to you but nobody in Europe cares, we also couldn't care less about the Club World Cup. I mean it's such a short competition you can't possibly feel that it determines the best team in the world. I have Catalan friends and I asked them how they felt about Barca because I saw that they had won it, and these guys keep up to date daily on Barcelona sites and fanzines and really have an incredible amount of knowledge about the club, but they barely even realised. I mean they knew it happened but they didn't care to the extent that when I brought up that it happened the day before they were like "What? Oh yeah that thing". Nobody cares here.
August 13, 201015 yr we also couldn't care less about the Club World Cup. Now, that's weird! We really like Club World Cup. In 2006 the team I support won it by beating Barcelona, there are no words to describe how happy I was. 17/12/2010, I'll never forget it. it's such a short competition you can't possibly feel that it determines the best team in the world. Football is not meant to be fair. Football is not about the best, it is about the winner. In 2006, Barcelona had a way better squad than we did. But that just doesn't matter. We won, and it's our most important honour ever. In the last UEFA Champions League, Barça played Inter in the semi-finals. Barça's squad was better than Inter's squad. But that just doesn't matter. Inter won, Barça lost. Simple as that.
August 13, 201015 yr the club world cup is played in japan in december sometime right? which is right in the middle of the european season where most of the better teams are playing in their own domestic league, a domestic cup and just finished the group stage of the champs league. on the other hand im pretty sure the south american equivalent of the champs league isnt played during that time of the year allowing the south american representative to focus much more heavily on the tournament than their european opposition. either way i would say that the winner of the champs league does determine the best team in the world simply because i dont see any of the south american clubs winning (or even coming close to winning) the english or spanish leagues and to a lesser extent the german and italian leagues. but we're talking about two very different brands of football so it is sometimes hard to judge.
August 13, 201015 yr im pretty sure the south american equivalent of the champs league isnt played during that time of the year allowing the south american representative to focus much more heavily on the tournament than their european opposition. The south american equivalent has a name. It's called Libertadores da América (America Libertatores). It's played from March to August. It's important to note that here in Brazil (only in Brazil, I think), you don't have that two-year season, a whole season is inside a year. either way i would say that the winner of the champs league does determine the best team in the world simply because i dont see any of the south american clubs winning (or even coming close to winning) the english or spanish leagues and to a lesser extent the german and italian leagues. but we're talking about two very different brands of football so it is sometimes hard to judge. Brazil and Argentina won 9 times either Intercontinental Cup or Club World Cup EACH. While England won it only twice, both times with Man Utd. That seems significant, doesn't it?
August 13, 201015 yr Mario Balotelli is having a medical at Manchester City Welcome Mario Balotelli to gods Chosen Team... Another World Class Player joins City :dance:
August 13, 201015 yr you can only have 25! (or has that rule not filtered through to eastlands yet? :laugh3:)
August 13, 201015 yr Premier League still holds golden ticket for fans Flaky economy, massive public sector cuts and a chastening World Cup experience for the world's "best" domestic football league... it is hardly an optimum sales environment for the Premier League's box-office staff, is it? And yet, broadly speaking, they have pulled it out of the bag again. Having spent the last two days on the phone, I can exclusively reveal the English still like football and are willing to pay good money to go and watch it every other week. As discretionary spends go, a Premier League season ticket appears up there with a decent cup of coffee, bar of chocolate or lottery scratch card as the last luxury to give up. OK, the situation isn't rosy everywhere - there are some winners and a few losers - but the general picture is sales have held up, as clubs have frozen prices and offered juicy discounts to "early birds", online customers and the young and old. But first, the winners. Take a bow Arsenal, Blackpool, Chelsea, Manchester City and Spurs, the only Premier League clubs to have actually put up the "sold out" signs for season tickets. The London trio continue to pack them in despite charging the highest prices in the country (the cheapest adult season ticket at the Emirates is £886, £695 at the Bridge and £680 at White Hart Lane). All three also claim to have long waiting lists, so it seems there are more than enough wealthy people left in the capital to go around. But a word of caution. Waiting lists are not what they used to be, as Manchester United can confirm, but I will return to that later. Blackpool's massive sales surge should come as no surprise. A first season in the top flight since 1971, 5,000 extra seats at Bloomfield Road and half a dozen new players to cheer on, there are plenty of reasons for the 'Pool's big win. But credit where credit is due, their 12,000 tickets sold is an annual rise of 140%. Manchester City's sales bonanza is testament to the growing expectations up at 'Middle Eastlands'. Successive summers of serious spending in the transfer market have helped shift an extra 3,000 tickets. Nice work. But remember what they say about despair and hope, it is the latter that kills you. City's numbers, of course, cannot be viewed without comparison to those of their cross-city rivals United. The most tempting narrative is one of Blues up, Reds down. Sadly, Premier League life is not that simple. An entire prospectus could be written on the summer saga surrounding ticket sales at Old Trafford but the twitter version would be "they're down but not by much and it's all relative really". That's no fun, though, so let's delve a little deeper into what has been happening at the Manchester branch of the Glazer business empire. First, season tickets are still available at Old Trafford. I know this because I have just tried to buy some. Having downloaded a "season ticket invitation" brochure from the website, I called the ticket office and was immediately put through to a helpful sales assistant (not the case at every club, I can assure you). Within minutes, we had discussed options on three sides of the ground, all in the second tier, for between £684 and £779. And that was "two together". Hold on a minute, what happened to United's famous waiting list (said to number 24,000 at the end of last season)? Well, it has evaporated. And this is despite the first price freeze since the Glazers arrived in 2005 and what many supporters have described as the biggest sales push in memory. To be fair to the club, though, this is not the first time season tickets have been placed on general sale. United also deny this year's marketing effort has been any bigger than previous years. And it must be remembered that the club has sold more season tickets than the capacity of 17 Premier League grounds. That said, demand for tickets has undoubtedly fallen away at Old Trafford, which should make the next quarterly conference call for the club's bondholders slightly more interesting than usual and give the anti-Glazer movement something to ponder. Another set of disaffected supporters with plenty to chew on is at Liverpool. The official line is "only a low percentage" of the club's season ticket-holders have not renewed but anecdotal evidence suggests there was a significant hole as of a month ago. This can change quickly and nothing matches the boost of a new manager and players for drumming up sales. What might continue to hurt sales at Anfield, though, is the ongoing dissatisfaction with the club's owners, if for no other reason than they have just hiked prices by 7% for season tickets and 10% for single games. Everton's figures are a little disappointing, too, but I am loath to criticise them too much as they were by far the most forthcoming with their numbers. So full marks for transparency and good luck with selling those 1,000 seats needed to reach last year's total of 26,000. In fact, this idea of a late push to get up to last year's number is pretty typical. Blackburn, Bolton, Sunderland, West Ham and Wolves all declared themselves to be "comfortable", "about where we were" or "very close to being on par", while the two other promoted teams, Newcastle and West Brom, have both enjoyed the bump their elevated status should bring. Numbers for Aston Villa, Fulham and Wigan have been harder to verify but the anecdotal evidence suggests it is a case of as you were at Villa Park (recent reports of a 40% slump were flatly denied), slightly up at Craven Cottage and approaching average at the DW. Stoke City deserve a mention, too. They are "very close" to joining the ranks of the "sold out". Having passed 20,000 for the first time last season, they are a tad under 21,000. So there you have it. Despite concerns over jobs and mortgages, a lack of really eye-catching new talent in the league and the colossal downer that was the World Cup, the Premier League is still a pretty easy sell. That is not to say everything is hunky-dory, though. Overall attendances have declined for the last two seasons (occupancy, however, has remained solid at 92.4%) and the Bundesliga, with its safe terraces, cheap tickets and customer-friendly approach to mid-game refreshments, is now the best-attended football league in the world. It is also the most profitable. The Premier League should also be concerned about its ageing demographics. According to the Football Supporters' Federation, only one in 10 fans at any given game is under the age of 24. Two decades of rising prices have transformed the profile of the average Premier League supporter. So the short-term outlook remains relatively positive but there could be trouble in store the next time an economic downturn asks football fans if they can really afford their season tickets. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/mattslater/2010/08/premier_league_still_holds_gol.html
Create an account or sign in to comment