Looks like Liverpool were going to get the nod to defend their trophy this Wednesday but.... Everton have realised that if Liverpool make it to the Group Stage (it is looking increasingly likely UEFA will come up with some killer schedule forcing Liverpool to play a qualifying round and the Super Cup), then the English clubs' share of the Group money would be split five ways (assuming the Mancs, Liverpool and themselves all survive) costing them a cool £5m. So the other scousers are objecting now.

Dickov was a muscle strain rather than a tear. Could not be repaired surgically but needed at least four weeks complete rest.

Whilst Savage's image was appearing in the role of a tart and vicar all rolled into one ("modelling" the new away kit), he was also having groin surgery yesterday.

You are joking- England in the Final not selling out? (especially as the opposition is likely to be Germany) Anyway, a little matter of beating Denmark, not losing to Sweden, and surviving a semi against opposition ranked well ahead of us.

Glad that everyone enjoyed that game and are looking to get down to Ewood for the next two England games. Just a thought- in the now slightly less unlikely event of England making it to the Final, Ewood will not be big enough to accommodate the numbers who will want to see it. Better get your tickets now.

That is just a brilliant web-site! The scrap over football's future initiated by Glazer is getting closer. Taken from World Soccer News: The SU spokesman said: "Glazer's business plan projects EBITDA (operating profits) in the year to July 31 2006 of 57.1 million pounds (103 million dollars) and in the next year July 31 2007 of 89.1 million pounds (161 million dollars). "Where can he find another 32 million pounds (58 million dollars) of operating profit in one year's trading? Manchester United supporters are taking legal advice over a possible challenge to Malcolm Glazer's bid to take the club into private ownership. I very much doubt the supporters would succeed but they might assemble enough of a legal argument to delay Glazer- having bought 76% of Man U, Glazer is cash out to the tune of £600m already and time is money as they say... Putting things into context, there are only 18 clubs in the world with turnover (total sales income) of more than the £57m - the amount of operating profit (up a cool 125% over Man U's current profitability) Man U are projected to make by Glazer in the year beginning just 26 days from now. Glazer has to do that in the context of being friendless in his customer base with a large vocal and highly influential minority hell bent on stopping him. Undoubtedly Glazer has a very good anti-PR firm working for him the way that news about Man U has been killed in the media. It is significant that the most commercially- managed voice in soccer, David Beckham, is the only one which has said anything vaguely positive about Glazer. I still have not seen anything that convinces me that Glazer will be in anything but deep trouble with this gamble.

This morning's gossip has Bowyer being bid for by West Ham for £1.5m and Ambrose wanted by Charlton for a similar amount. So Bellamy is sitting tight at St James's whilst players Souness is reported to want to keep are quite possibly on their way. Couldn't happen to a nicer club....

Now who'd wanna miss that? 320712[/snapback] Might be fun watching a taffy demolition squad tackling the Riverside Stand.

2005/6 Fixtures for Newcastle. Souness' Intertoto adventure could include Turkey then Borussia Dortmund

Two interesting transfer snippets on the Mancs this morning- Glazer has ordered Ferdinand be sold if he doesn't sign his £100K per week contract. On the basis that an unhappy Ferdinand can probably only go to three or four clubs in the world who could beat that sort of weekly wage, I suspect he will leave for a relatively nominal transfer fee (or the Glazers will face a Bosman). The other is that van Nistelrooyd has been offered to Barca in a part swap deal for Etoo. It would seem the RFW has fallen out with RvN permanently- a bit like the Staam bust up which effectively scuppered the Manc back line. The scenario is unfurling nicely- the Mancs unsettle Etoo, Chelsea step in and buy him, RvN's value goes down because it is known he is for sale and RFW wants rid.

From the bits I've seen and read, that was not exactly a classic at Cardiff yesterday and Preston didn't turn up. I didn't have any money on my three way prediction- happily. So Sullivan will stay at Brum (for the time being), a bunch of talented youngsters will stay at West Ham (for the time being) and Mr Brown and his board can celebrate having got his hands on: £9m Estimated domestic TV income £6.5m Estimated overseas TV rights (this incidentally confirms that the Prem controls these rights and that Glazer will have to fight the Prem even if he only wants freedom to exploit non-UK broadcast rights) £350,000 per live TV appearance £500,000 in central sponsorship £1-2m in local sponsorships £475,000 per league place £14.4m over two seasons in parachute payments (if relegated, make that when relegated) That makes yesterday's game worth a cool £30m Probably more than £30m for although West Ham were already charging improbably high seat prices, those prices will probably go up and they can anticipate attendances rising from around 25,000 average to closer to 35,000 capacity. Plus a season's exposure in the Prem will boost the prices of the new generation of young Hammers stars when they have have to be sold following a probable relegation- Premiership football has staved off the Irons being melted down but won't exactly mean there is money for their clearly sub-Premiership standard squad to be renewed.

There is an amusing irony to Liverpool winning the European Cup: 1) Liverpool are now in UEFA Super Cup. The timing of the Super Cup match means that Liverpool cannot go into the qualifying rounds of the Champions League- FIXTURE CLASH. So if Liverpool defend their Cup, Fenerbahce will drop from the Group stages into the third qualifying round. Fenerbahce are from the Asian side of Istanbul- the area which hosted all the Liverpool fans so well for the European Cup final. 2) I am not sure about the timing but this is even more ironic. Loverpool are also the UEFA representatives in the revived World Club Championship (that awful kick around in the long grass of Brasil which Man U scived out of the FA Cup for). I believe this will be held in December before Christmas. Since the UEFA Cup was given a group format (which I thought worked very well last year), the UEFA Cup Group games extend... into mid-December. So UEFA had not anticipated the European Champions playing in the UEFA Cup because it looks like there is a FIXTURE CLASH between the UEFA and World Club Cups. The UEFA top brass are probably working out that they have no option but to put Liverpool straight into the Champions League Group stage because of their own make believe add-on games. There will of course be massive behind the scene pressure on the FA to dump Everton's Champions League nomination which the FA and Premier League should rightly resist. The implications for Liverpool playing the Premiership, League Cup, FA Cup, either UEFA or Champions Cup, European Super Cup and World Club Cup is mind boggling. Next season has been shortened anyway because of the World Cup! SGE is probably begging Chelsea to sign Gerrard so he's not too tired to play in Germany! The other knock on effect is that Fenerbahce must surely demand top seeding in the third round Champions League Qualifying Stage- that means all the others will slip down including Man U and the Old Firm increasing the probability of a Battle of Britain in August in what would also be a financial battle to the death. Even tastier would be Celtic v Everton and Rangers v Man U coming out of the bag for successive Tuesday and Wednesday evenings in late August (with the return legs one week later).

Sky Sports have reported that Glazer will have to find £61m in interest and fees payments per year. Glazer has therefore borrowed an additional £109m in working capital to fund those service payments. The bank borrowings he has taken on will end up costing more than double the amount loaned if he repays them at the end of their term. Of course Glazer must have some formula for re-financing this lot but with the huge penalty payment for paying off the hedge funds in the first two years, he is sqeezed in the short term. The size of the numbers involved probably means he will struggle to keep his re-financing secret with a determined and sophisticated group of people like Shareholders United watching his every move- I doubt Glazer had bargained on being laid naked the way every aspect of his business and personal life is now going to be exposed in the British press. This gives the football world and teams coming up against him in the transfer market something of an advantage: Should Glazer go to Court about the Premiership TV Rights agreements being anti-competitive, the Premier League could find that legitimate delaying tactics might be every bit as effective as actually getting a ruling against Glazer- particularly if they can avoid an expedited trial. Were Chelsea and Man U go for the same £20m rated transfer target, Chelsea would know that Man U would have an upper price limit they could not go beyond without selling a player or getting a legal waiver of covenant agreed, paid for and signed with the Hedge Funds. So the sudden move Ferguson made to sign Rooney when Newcastle made an offer for him last summer would not have been possible this summer. An interesting American article here observing that European commercial exploitation of sports is in many ways ahead of American practise. It points out that yields from American sports TV advertising rights have probably peaked with the availability of recorders which screen out the adverts. Sports fans can reduce three hours of gridiron to ninety minutes on the replay (and no doubt find it a much more satisfying experience).

Once again Hughes is going up in my opinion as the Blackburn Rovers Manager. On Nelsen not playing for NZ- unlike Emerton and Neill who have potential World Cup places at stake (and therefore chances to enhance their value to Rovers), Nelsen's involvement in playing for NZ is just an injury risk. As Nelsen reports the conversation, Hughes handled it with dignity and restraint. Just as Rovers suffer from occasional bouts of player power against us, so Rovers have rightly used their position with Nelsen not yet having received a work permit. On the offer for sale of Stead, Hughes has said the transfers this summer will be a jigsaw with the pieces falling into place. Everyone expects we are after two strikers (at least). Assuming two come in, even a rejuvenated Stead would be competing with Dickov for a position on the bench and most people have commented that Dickov is best deployed from the bench. Then there is Gally, Johnson, possibly Jansen, possibly Garner. Rather than have Stead become a periferal squad player who would be nearly valueless twelve months from now, far better to signal a selling price (£1.5m plus sell-on) to a cash-strapped Sunderland before they have started spending their limited transfer funds. Until Kuqi was mentioned by Ipswich, all the players we had been linked to were unambiguously better than anything we already had at the club. Patience- the widow opens on 1 July.

American, are you wilfully misunderstanding? Completely contradicts WHAT exactly? The old Man U Board sought legally binding commitments as to the conduct of the company under Glazer- these included the MINIMUM amount of transfer funds Glazer would make available. Glazer refused to say anything and the Board duly reported that fact in its 18 page analysis of the Glazer offer. The Independent Newspaper has now exercised the right to examine the documents lodged at Glazer's lawyers relating to the takeover of a London Stock Exchange listed PLC- Manchester United. The covenants signed by Glazer for the £275m of preference shares subscribed by the American Hedge funds sets a MAXIMUM amount for transfer fees of £60m over four years (£26m then progressively reducing in any one year) beyond which Glazer is in breech. He has NOT covenanted to pay so much as a minimum of one penny in transfer fees. He HAS covenanted to pay a smaller maximum number (£60m over four years) than the famous £20m a year for five years he talked about when he was trying to persuade the shareholders to sell Man U to him. The difference between American sport and European sport is that American owners are largely in it for the money and European owners are not. In the UK, the ONLY people making money out of ownership rights were in fact Manchester United shareholders receiving a dividend and then a capital killing out of Glazer assuming they didn't buy following the Manc treble and at the peak of the stock market bubble (1999). Abramovich has a huge capital gain on paper from Chelsea- he invested £150m to acquire ownership and clear the debts and about another £250m in transfers and operating losses. He probably has an asset in Chelsea worth about the same as Glazer paid for Man U- around £800m but the massive difference is Abramovich is underpinned by the 11 acres of Stamford Bridge in West London being worth £275m whereas 8 acres of Old Trafford in run down West Manchester are probably only worth £20m.

The important paragraph in that article is: Ian Todd, the vice-president of sports marketing for Nike, who signed the 2000 deal with Peter Kenyon, the then chief executive of Man Utd, told The Sunday Telegraph: "We don't know what is going to happen next year. All options are open." No doubt one option has been offered from Stamford Bridge.

The working party that I believe JW was a member of is presenting its report to the Premier League on how to make attending games more attractive to supporters. Some interesting statistics- attendance at games covered live fell by an average of 10% last season but overall TV viewing statistics rose by a massive 20%. I agree with Oscar Raven- ten wins in 38 league games over the last two seasons is a huge reason why ticket sales are collapsing at Ewood. The working party have identified the 4-5-1 system designed to protect Premiership status as heavilly responsible for the decline in entertaining football and are suggesting awarding 4 points for an away win as a way of enlivening the league. Hmm, don't know if making the visiting teams even more incentivised is the key to getting more Rovers supporters to Ewood.

Southend up, The Owls tomorrow and Nob End on Monday. You read it here from me three days ago and if like me you didn't put any money on that threesome, you are as big a fool as I am.

Lechuck... it's all very judgemental. Steady (who I like a lot) but has had a stinker this season and for every good moment had had a moment you have chosen to forget or Sparky (Footballing GOD) finding his way as a Manager but clearly his own man with his own ideas who isn't attempting GBH on £2m of BRFC assets (aka Yorke) or turning triumph into abject failure on the back of a face lift. ######, I gave Souness the benefit of the doubt for long enough so anything Sparky does this summer is fine by me or jim mk 2.

Just been reading Anfield Road- a very well written Liverpool blog I stumbled across this morning. One telling comment (bearing in mind they have just won the European Cup), "we are still paying the price of what Souness did even now".

The Independent have gone to the lawyers and exercised the right to see the details of Glazer's financing. This is so spectacularly bad that the replacement finance must already be in place. My guess is the type of long term- 25 years, insurance backed triple A, triple A paper that Arsenal are using for Ash burton Grove must be planned. NM Rothschild are both Arsenal's and Glazer's advisers. However, Glazer has to wait until the early repayment penalties are out of the way and has some complicated refinancing to do of the bridging loan and other debt. My guess is he is somewhat vulnerable to the fans making association with Man U a hazardous activity and very vulnerable if Man U continue their relative decline on the football pitch. I suspect we will see his assault on football's structures sooner rather than later.

add... for the Premiership title in 2005/6. PS Benitez didn't do a bad job assembling a squad at Valencia did he- two Liga titles and a UEFA Cup. In fact his sequence is the same as Mourinho's except that he won the League in a much tougher competition (Spain as opposed to Portugal) and lifted the European Cup at his new club rather than his old one. Bit different from Sparky in that respect.

Some interesting afters from the Liverpool win. 1) The G-14 have rallied round fellow member Liverpool to urge their inclusion in next year's Champions League. Time to get worried when completely non-qualifying G-14ers get lobbied for. 2) Benitez has been given £30m plus anything he raises from player sales to spend on transfer fees this summer. I'd trust Benitez to create a team good enough to beat Chelski. 3) Seen the Aussie press are getting upset about the stick being given to Kewell. The best line I saw about Kewell- a player with a heart the size of a diamond ear stud!

Bob on Colin. Even shareholders' United are advising their people to take Glazer's gold and reinvest it in the SU/Nomura Fighting Fund. Only problem with the SU/Nomura Fighting Fund is that if Glazer goes under, they will find four American Hedge Funds will have effectively bought Man U for £275m and been paid 8% interest on their money plus fees for watching what was going on whilst they (the Funds) waited to take control. Now that is a nice deal for the Hedge Funds. If Glazer gets into trouble, they will be very happy to help push him under once it gets to a point they decide is best for them.

An interesting explanation in the Tampa Bay Tribune. Note the assumption that Glazer wants to set up an NFL equivalent for soccer in Europe. A rather less incisive Business Week report