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

American, your argument about the relative values of companies is wrong- the BBC has an index setting a global representative set of blue chip company values in 2000 at 100 and it is still in the low 90s- many sectors including entertainment have fallen far further. The internet bubble in equity values has not worked its way out of the system yet. Buying Man U on a p/e of 30+ (Glazer's price on the last six month's results) is over-paying on anybody's basis. Nicholson makes many valid points in his article. Where Nicholson completely falls down is in failing to consider the ratio of the rich man's wealth to the extent of his involvement in the target football club. Abramovich has twenty times as much capital as money ploughed into Chelsea, Whelan at Wigan a ratio of four to one, Jack Walker at Rovers was a similar four to one, the tightest ratio which has been a success is probably Gibson at Boro with a ratio of two to one. Against that, clubs have run into problem where the rich investor has taken on a proposition which is worth/costing something more equal to their personal wealth as the sometimes rocky finances of Rangers and Celtic and any number of English examples have shown- Wimbledon under the Norwegians, Cardiff under Hamman, Burnley under their guy etc etc. Glazer probably has a ratio of one and a bit to one at best. The other issue is that all previous examples have taken the clubs on with a motivation other than simple money-making. On the current model, Glazer cannot make money out of Man U. This is a comprehensive report of the retiring Board's (not unexpected) critique of Glazer's plans. Understandably unhappy but equally sufficiently legitimate that a squadron of lawyers and financial advisers will have signed off on this statement. Glazer has to change the business paradigm and make Man U at least four times more progitable than it was as a PLC (which was itself geared up to make profits and optimise dividend payments). That may or may not be a threat to Man U but my gut feel is that he is gambling big with insufficient resources to ride out failures. Whilst the supporter resistance will be a marginal nuisance, Glazer's calculations might be so tight that they could upset his plan. Obviously Glazer wants to buy continued sporting success but sporting success does not follow money automatically- ask Wolves about an example of a Bahamian-based investor (not that far from Florida) not succeding. Even if Man U spend £20m on transfers this summer (a number he wouldn't even confirm to the board currently running Man U), it looks like he will be outspent by Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Wigan and possibly Everton, Newcastle and Spurs. The rates of interest Glazer is paying plus the terms under which he effectively will forfeit his own shares to the hedge funds in five years' time show that his backers are not sharing his risk or have any particular confidence in his secretive plans- their money has entered on sceptical "good luck to you mate but we've made sure you won't lose our money" terms. However, in trying to change the business paradigm, Glazer is a massive threat to Blackburn Rovers. That is why as a Rovers supporter I hope he fails.

1) Back in '99 hundreds of companies were worth very much more than they are today 2) Glazer is spending £812m to buy Manc shares 3) The weakness in the dollar makes buying non-dollar assets more expensive in dollar terms. 4) I am not looking at this in sporting terms but financial and political ones. Man U not winning the FA Cup weakens them financially. Liverpool winning the European Cup means that Man U have relatively less clout within the English game or in speaking for English club interests in Europe. Arsenal were only rivals to Man U over the past decade whereas for the two decades before then Liverpool were unambiguously the leading club in England. With Chelsea financially now massively ahead of Man U following Glazer's appearance and Liverpool European Champions, Man U's leadership of the English game has slipped away which will make any Glazer grab of the football pie for himself even more selfish.

My issues with the Glazer takeover of the mancs has nothing to do with his nationality or my 40 years' abiding dislike for that particular football club, but everything to do with the threat to competitive football and the well-being of the football club I love- Blackburn Rovers. Glazer now has the Board recommendation he sought from the Manc Chairman- with a barb in the tail: rather disingenuously the outgoing Chairman sought legal assurances on a range of issues pertaining to the future operation and conduct of the club from Glazer and received none whatsoever. At least Sir Roy must hope that will prevent unwanted pizza deliveries to his home and office courtesy of disaffected Manc supporters. An American news service perhaps puts this thing into perspective for American readers. If Glazer is so utterly uncaring of Manc supporters, there is no hope for the rest of football being spared from his rapacious behaviour. Glazer's existing sporting interest is in a cosy rich man's collective where there is no relegation or promotion. I am sure he does not expect Man U failing to qualify for the Champs League Group stages, let alone countenance relegation from the top division which is what happened seven years after their first European Cup triumph. As joey big nose has commented on another thread, six English Premiership Clubs (Chelsea, Arsenal, Mancs, Everton, Liverpool, and Spurs) are geared up with the quality of management as well as the transfer budgets to target the top four places- two will inevitably fail. Not forgetting that, at a guess, nine other Prem clubs are working on their own versions of "doing an Everton" and a tenth, Newcastle, probably shares Glazer's belief they should be in the Champs League by rights because they are "massive". I doubt Glazer's business plan countenances such a failure and he will seek to remove that massive downside sporting competitive risk of his Manc business as rapidly as possible. It could be that UEFA will be even more at risk from Glazer than the Premiership in the near future. It will be interesting to see what Abramovich will do but I wouldn't be surprised to see him put an unfriendly impediment or two in the Mancs' way whilst Glazer is trying to absorb his acquisition of Man U and restructure his debt away from the high cost vehicles he had to use to achieve the open market purchase. Perhaps a cheeky bid for Rio Ferdinand and more Obi- style raids on Manc transfer targets?

I don't normally do this sort of thing but I sent the following e-mail to info@uefa.com under the heading "European Champions League without the European Champions???" Hello, I am astonished by the assertions by M Gaillard that Liverpool are to be excluded from defending the Trophy they won outright last night. I fully understand why the FA are reluctant to bend their rules about the top four Premiership clubs qualifying and believe that UEFA should accommodate Liverpool even if it means they enter the competition in the first qualifying round and perhaps the other English clubs give up a bye into the third round to accommodate them. You have to remember that Everton and Liverpool are city rivals and that Everton have already paid once before in terms of European competition for their neighbours. When the European ban on English clubs came in following Heysel, Everton had just won the UEFA Cup with probably the best side in Europe at that time and would have been heavy favourites to win the European Cup the following season. There is no way that the FA and UEFA can punish Everton again for events on the other side of Stanley Park. Surely, Istanbul in which the Liverpool supporters turned the Final into a Liverpool home game show how massive a club Liverpool is and it must be in UEFA's self-interest to change the rules this season rather than next. After all, Ford, one of the sponsors of the Champions League have a major car plant in Liverpool and are certain to come under significant PR and commercial pressure to back the campaign for Liverpool to be given the right to play as European Champions in the otherwise so-called "Champions League".

The Liverpool supporters are continuing their mayhem here in Malta. I am delighted because: It makes the Prem number 1 in Europe again (with our fifth best team) The English League is again the most successful in Europe historically. Man U/ Glazer can really choke on this. The Italian coverage of Berlusconi was priceless!

Do you think Crespo has played his way back into the Chelsea first team squad after tonight's performance? No sleep tonight- the Liverpool supporters are carcading round Malta and the fireworks are going off! It is going completely crazy out there at the moment. The Britannia Bar in Gzira was oddly quiet- the regulars had gone to Istanbul. Besides the scheduled flights, Air Malta laid on four charter flights- the unknowing Turks assumed they were all Milan supporters so four plane loads of boozed up Maltese Liverpool supporters landed at the airport reserved for the AC Milan supporters all with tickets for the AC section!

Irrespective of Abbey and Whittle's feelings, I cannot see anything stopping PNE getting promoted and West Ham certainly aren't going to. Sheff Weds and Southend to win the other two play-off finals. And then the season will finally be over. Thank goodness none of our players are off on meaningless end-of-season internationals. Of course, there's a chance to see the European Totty at Ewood.