At Celtic Park in the away end, I remember us singing "Friedel, Friedel" during the warm-up and Egil Ostenstad came over to us to clap, I think he thought we were singing "Egil, Egil". It was the thought that counts though 🙃

El Bresidente

Here you go, Preston to Rochdale. https://uktvplay.uktv.co.uk/shows/great-british-railway-journeys/watch-online/6163224147001

By a tackle from Dave Mackay I've been told.

They must have started to panic when Wigan went top of the Form Guides (last 10 matches LDDWWWDWWW). https://www.footballwebpages.co.uk/wigan-athletic/form-guide/ten

For a layman (me) is there any reason (financially?) that someone would take over a business with the intention to immediately declare administration?

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/may/28/pills-mills-and-bellyaches-how-blackburn-out-partied-manchester?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbclid=IwAR1bIZGAlZvqMaEEyQU4Ra-B3PIN1p1yfO-a_L6fMc5CuM0pzXbkWpW3Eog

https://mixmag.net/read/online-archive-blackburn-acid-house-rave-scene-news

Crickey lads, what was going on at SMC?

**Just my opinion as I have little knowledge of this but is the below about right?** Although it doesn’t necessarily matter about your profit and loss from year to year I suppose, it’s your total debt that is the issue. Once that spirals (like Portsmouth/Bolton) and your benefactor/directors no longer want to plug the losses, then its administration time. If you have saleable assets (stadium, training ground, academy etc) then you’ll get a buyer because there’s something concrete to secure your purchase against and take the debt on. This happened with Bolton initially a few years back. Their problem (and Bury’s for that matter) has been that the successive owners who took over have tried to asset strip some parts for whatever reason (inject more cash into the club, pay off loans the new owners used to buy the clubs in the first place or a potential opportunity to make money personally from the club) whilst continuing to make losses. Loans then get called in, creditors want their cash, tax bills go unpaid. Sometimes the process will then repeat itself but in this instance Bolton and Bury have been so poorly managed, sold key assets (Steve Dale has sold the stadium & car park) potential new buyers aren’t as attracted and pull out. A wiseman once said, if you owe 100m and can’t pay it back, it’s the banks problem. If you owe 5-10m and can’t pay it back it’s your problem. The people who took over at Bolton & Bury had no money themselves to stem any losses. They weren’t fans, they simply bought he club with loaned money which they aimed to repay by carefully stripping the club of a few assets at a time and hopefully injecting a bit of cash into the playing side to get some success. They’d then sell the club and make some money back (as would their initial backers). Only thing is it is not as simple as that.

Need to credit Martyn Ziegler of The Times for the info

The 92 League clubs ranked in order of profitability Accounts for the 2018-19 season show 52 of the 72 EFL clubs losing money. 2017-18 Net profit and loss 1 Tottenham £113m 2 Liverpool £106m 3 Chelsea £62m 4 Arsenal £57m 5 Burnley £37m 6 Southampton £29m 7 Newcastle £19m 8 Hull £19m 9 West Ham £17m 10 Norwich £15m 11 Barnsley £13m 12 Huddersfield £11m 13 Brighton £11m 14 Manchester City £10m 15 Exeter £2.4m 16 Leicester £1m 17 Preston £1m 18 Port Vale £1m 19 Stevenage £0.8m 20 Luton £0.6m 21 Peterborough £0.5m 22 Forest Green £0.4m 23 Accrington £0.4m 24 Fleetwood £0.4m 25 Burton £0.3m 26 Shrewsbury £0.3m 27 Gillingham £0.1m 28 Plymouth £0.1m 29 Newport £0.1m 30 Yeovil £0.1m 31 Walsall no profit/loss 32 Barnet no profit/loss 33 Grimsby -£0.04m 34 Cheltenham -£0.1m 35 Carlisle -£0.1m 36 Mansfield -£0.1m 37 Bradford -£0.3m 38 Rochdale -£0.3m 39 Crawley -£0.3m 40 Morecambe -£0.4m 41 Oldham -£0.5m 42 Rotherham -£0.5m 43 Wimbledon -£0.5m 44 Wycombe -£0.7m 45 Crewe -£0.8m 46 Cambridge -£0.8m 47 Chesterfield -£1.1m 48 Lincoln -£1.1m 49 Derby -£1.1m 50 Portsmouth -£1.4m 51 Notts County -£1.5m 52 Swindon -£1.8m 53 Sheffield Utd -£1.9m 54 Northampton -£2m 55 Oxford -£2m 56 Blackpool -£2.1m 57 Coventry -£2.5m 58 Doncaster -£2.8m 59 Bury -£2.8m 60 Swansea -£3m 61 Southend -£3.1m 62 Colchester -£3m 63 Bristol Rovers -£3m 64 Scunthorpe -£3.6m 65 Brentford -£3.9m 66 Leeds -£4.3m 67 MK Dons -£4.6m 68 Millwall -£4.6m 69 Ipswich -£5.2m 70 Bolton -£5.4m 71 Nottingham Forest -£5.6m 72 West Brom -£6m 73 Middlesbrough -£6.6m 74 Wigan -£7.7m 75 Sunderland -£10.2m 76 Charlton -£10.4m 77 Bournemouth -£11m 78 Everton -£13m 79 Blackburn -£16.8m 80 Reading -£21m 81 Sheffield Wed -£21m 82 Bristol City -£25m 83 Watford -£31m 84 Stoke -£32m 85 Aston Villa -£35m 86 Cardiff -£36m 87 Crystal Palace -£36m 88 Manchester Utd -£37m 89 Birmingham -£37m 90 QPR -£38m 91 Fulham -£45m 92 Wolves -£57m

On Pleasy Playing Fields.

Just keep in mind that if venkys pull out of the Rovers with the debt they are covering, we could be next.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/football/48736727 Why and how?

One of the Holy Trinity, with Dunny and Duffy http://www.polarispublishing.com/book/matt_jansen What do you do when the world is at your feet . . . and then suddenly it isn’t? Matt Jansen had it all. He was young, quick, audaciously skilful and, at the turn of the millennium, regarded as one of the most intelligent attacking talents in English football. His potential seemed boundless. After bursting onto the scene with Carlisle in 1997 and helping his hometown club win promotion, Sir Alex Ferguson had tried to lure him to Old Trafford – but foreseeing only a bench spot at United, Jansen instead opted for Steve Coppell’s Crystal Palace. In 1998, he moved to Blackburn, and after blasting them back to the Premier League he earned a place in Sven Goran-Eriksson’s England squad on the back of a 16-goal season that included a strike in the final of the League Cup, which Blackburn won. At 24 Jansen was widely tipped to be part of England’s squad at the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan, but Eriksson instead surprised many with his conservative selection of Martin Keown over the rising star; Keown wouldn’t play a single minute at the tournament and England would crash out to ten-man Brazil – but Jansen didn’t see a minute of it. While England battled it out in the Far East, Jansen had taken a holiday to Rome where he was involved a serious traffic accident. He suffered a brain haemorrhage and slipped into a six-day coma. Jansen survived and, astonishingly, he was back playing for Blackburn just four months later. But while his body may have recovered, his mind had not. In the shadow of the accident, he was unable to recapture the instinctive genius or the bullet-proof self-confidence that had previously defined him. This was a hidden breakdown – nothing that could be picked up by a fitness test or fixed on an operating table. As Jansen’s career as an elite footballer slipped away from him, he started to discover more about what had happened to him and how he could recover not only as an athlete, but as a person. This is the story of a career destined for the stratosphere, cruelly snatched away by the vagaries of fate. Brilliant, bold, and at times brutal in its honesty, this powerful tale of shattered dreams and a life rebuilt is a testament to an inspiring, unconquered soul.

Just watched a fair bit of it. It's really well produced and the access they got is unprecedented. No idea how they managed that. Jason Steele: Good lad, not a very good goalkeeper. Jack Rodwell: Morality vs Money (see episode 5): Discuss.

It feels odd. Under Souness and Hughes when we were a goal up we'd lock it out. Now if we are 1 up going into the finish, we seem to fall apart!

Maybe a statician can dispute this but it feels like we concede goals in the last few minutes constantly.

Went to the Clog the other day it was OK. However they said they are shutting for two weeks in a fortnight for a refurbishment. They are building a large fireplace in the middle and new furniture. Might be worth seeing if they refresh the menu when it reopens.

The breadth and scope of GTA5 is unlike anything I've seen. Assuming this is the PS3 and Xbox360 pushed to their limits I can't quite get my head around what the PS4 and Xbox One are going to be capable of.

I'll be interested to try the Butlers when I next back up, my old local. Used to be a great 'drinking' pub back in the day but always thought it was in a great position for a restaurant. The view sitting out the back in summer with the sun setting over Hoghton Hill is fabulous.

Jon Snuuuuur!

About the same verdict from me as well and I agree about the 2nd half of the 3rd series. Perhaps unfair though, to have kept up the standard of the first 2 would have been asking a lot. Not many comedies make much more than two great seasons before having to parody themselves a bit and running out of steam. Still, it's the greatest of its type ever made so it will always have that.