Three and in – not just another football blog

Guest post by Indie Dave

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As I switched from stream to stream last Saturday, safe in the knowledge that I was only missing the 5th, 6th and 7th goal The Arsenal were definitely putting past the Barcodes, I found myself exasperated. Why the fuck, in this day in age do I have to put up with this shit? It’s not the lack of backbone, or even Sebastian Squillaci, but more that fact that I was watching the game on a dodgy stream in the first place.

I’m a season ticket holder at The Arsenal, which means that over the course of the season I’ll see at least all their home games, and fortunately enough the majority of their away games, either in the flesh, or simply because we’re on the telly a lot – probably too much for some people tastes. So it’s only about 7-10 times a season I’ll have to revert to the dreaded Justin.TV stream scramble. So what’s stopping fans from getting every game they want, on demand? The technology is there, the demand I’m sure must be there, yet still nothing. Well the reasons are manyfold, and the balance is very delicate.

Fans can find a range of high quality streams online

The main reason, like anything is money. And it starts with Sky. Can you imagine Sky TV without the Premier League? It’d be pretty worthless, and unless you were a massive film buff, I reckon at least 75% of its customer base would evaporate overnight. Hence the reason Sky are so desperate to retain rights, and why, every 3 years, the Premier League TV deal smashes records.

It currently stands at around £1.3bn over 3 years. About £20m per club, per season, give or take, (and even that sounds small. I’ve seen 2 and 3 times that amount bandied about.) There will come a time, and it’ll probably happen sooner rather than later when Sky will have to say, that’s it, we can’t increase the amount, that’s the limit we can charge our customers, or else we’ll lose them. Now I know Sky aren’t the only show in town, but say for arguments sake that it got to that point, what would happen if the clubs decided to explore an alternative?

One of the reasons why the Premier League is so cash rich is because TV rights are negotiated collectively. Each team gets the same basic amount, with appearances and prize money making up the variation. Unlike in Spain where the clubs negotiate their own TV deals, resulting in the big two, Real Madrid and Barcelona taking a far higher percentage then their rivals. I’m sure they’ll argue that since they are the biggest draws, with the best, highest paid players, and everyone wants to watch them, then they deserve to get the biggest slice of the pie. It does nothing for competition, so in that way the Premier Leagues set up is admirable.

See, the crux of this matter lies with the Premier League ruling that dictates decisions effecting the league require 14 votes to pass it. For the big clubs, it must be killing them, hamstrung as they are by the fact that they are limited to the amount of season tickets they can sell, by the amount of seats they have in their ground. What you will soon find, with more Russian billionaires and Saudi Princes coming to the table, is that magic number of 14 votes will slowly get closer and closer as clubs realise that they have now become more powerful than that which created them, and no longer need its services.

Of course, there will be people who would suggest that the availability of internet streams would badly affect attendances. Well that argument has been going on since the introduction of floodlights, if the atmosphere is so desirable, people will still go, and it’ll be up to the clubs to manage their ticket pricing to make it worthwhile to go to games. If you look at Arsenal, for their Carling Cup games, the majority of seats in the house were £10, and nearly every game was sold out. The reason you see a load of empty seats at the DW? Probably has as much to do with the fact that the seats are so expensive and it’s the club has a ground too big for its fan base, but if they started charging £10 a seat for every game, and financed an online package that offered the fan every game online, with a dedicated club channel, they could be looking at making more than the money due from Sky.

Is the online season ticket the way to go?

It adds up, and if done well could turn a club a real profit, however the Sky cash is the safer be. However, as I said, the time may come when the smaller club is left with no other choice other than to take up the offer, or just like in 1991, the big clubs will once again decide that the smaller ones are killing the game and threaten to break away.

So what would be the magic figure for the digital season ticket? How much would you be willing to pay? If you say going to the pub to watch the match will cost you 3 pints, we’ll say a tenner. £10 x 38? £380 is fairly reasonable, over the course of the year, but still to pay that as a lump sum in June, well it may not be so good.

What about then a monthly subscription? £35 a month? It’s a much as you’ll pay Sky at the current rates, but then you do miss out on watching the title decider, relegation dogfight that your team may not even be involved in. Chelsea TV works out at £4.49 p/m online, but you don’t get any live games, so draw your own conclusions. Would £20 a month be the figure?

The downside of this would be that the owners of the clubs just look at the potential easy money online and then neglect their paying attending customer. For one way of avoiding that, the Premier League would do well to look at America. The NFL operates a Blackout Policy, whereby a home game cannot be televised locally if it is not sold out 72 hours prior to its start time, placing the onus on the club to price the match accordingly to suit demand, to ensure there is a full house. It’s a similar policy that West Ham are likely to have to consider in a few years, when they look to fill their Olympic Stadium, quite how that works out is anyones guess.

So to wrap things up, we know the technology is available, we use it every week. The demand is there. While attendances have slipped somewhat during the recession stadiums are still relatively full. People could argue that it’s the smaller teams that will die, but perhaps we’re living in a false economy, where there ar simply too many clubs, and not enough fans?

Of course this whole scenario would be solved if, like so many other industries, the powers that be, took better notice of what their customers want, and how they consumer their product. However that is about as unlikely as a Newcastle equaliser after being 4-0 down at half …

… oh dear.


Genuine question for Liverpool fans – why didn’t Fernando Torres take the penalty yesterday?

The club’s best player, star striker and surely the man who could be relied on stood aside allowing Dirk Kuyt to take the penalty? Was it pressure? Is Kuyt ahead of Torres in the penalty taking pecking order?

It just seemed odd to me that he didn’t want it. We hear all the time about big players standing up to be counted and how they can make the difference. with just two goals in his last ten games why didn’t he demand it, why didn’t he want it?

As for the game itself, some thoughts:

- Liverpool’s defensive weaknesses need to be sorted above everything else. Rumours of a move for Luis Suarez are all well and good but until they find at least one centre-half and a left back they’re going to struggle.

- Leighton Baines turning his back on the ball cost Everton the first goal. I know it’s the natural reaction when facing a shot but if it means taking one squarely in the nuts or the face to stop a goal then that’s what you’ve got to do.

- Unfortunately, for both teams, lower mid-table is an accurate reflection of their form this season. Disappointing for both sides but the table doesn’t lie.

- Seamus Coleman and Martin Kelly look genuinely exciting prospects. It’ll be interesting to see if they can hold be held onto if the current form of both sides doesn’t improve.

- Marouane Fellaini’s hair is ridiculous – how can he head the ball properly?

And as for Sky’s risible ‘Return of the King’ montage at half-time, they have surpassed themselves with their cringeworthy mawkishness.

It’s often said that fans put footballers on pedestals, thinking of them as heroes, untouchable, giants of character and will, and the truth is that they’re not.

They’re the same as all of us, just a lot better at football. So when Ryan Babel tweeted a picture of Howard Webb in a Man United shirt he was just doing what thousands of Liverpool fans did. After bitter defeat we resort to recrimation and anger, to humour and sadness.

Babel’s tweet was misjudged and probably not wise for a Premier League player but in being charged by the FA there’s the danger of a can of worms opening here. After Berbatov’s dive in the game on Sunday, Arsenal keeper Wojciech Szczesny said:

Theo apologised yesterday. Wonder if Berbatov is going to apologise today … I guess that’s why Berbatov played for Spurs.

Very funny if you’re an Arsenal fan, probably not if you’re a United or Spurs fan, and it skirts around the edges of disrepute, based on The FA’s previous in this regard.

Then you have QPR players reacting to El Hadji Diouf’s taunting of Jamie Mackie. The Rangers player broke his leg in a tackle with Gael Givet, the Sengal international took exception to Mackie’s lunge despite the fact he injured himself.

Clint Hill - “That c*** will get what’s coming to him”

Bradley Orr – “You horrible disgusting man E H Diouf! Your time will come!”

Paddy Kenny – “That **** Diouf will get it one day, what goes around comes around.”

Regardless of the exclamation marks you might interpret those as threatening, perhaps inciteful. It’s dangerous ground all the same.

Yet these are human reactions. The same as we might have if we saw a team mate badly injured in a Sunday league game and saw one of the opposition standing over him snarling and spitting.

Yes, social networking allows us greater access to footballers, some of it is very positive, some of it not, but why this faux outrage when we discover they’re just people too? The standards we expect from them as professional footballers are one thing, where is written they ought to better at being people?

I suspect it won’t be long before clubs clamp down quite hard on players Tweeting and Facebooking. Sanitised versions of who they are to protect the image of the club they play for. And in a way I can understand that but what a shame it would be to miss out on the good stuff just because we can’t cope with some of the bad.

Ian Holloway is known as a manager with a good sense of humour. However, even he has struggled to laugh off the news that the Premier League are due to investigate him. Indeed, he has suggested he will resign if the investigation precedes a charge:

“I’d pack in. I can’t work for this madness. I would resign. They do not know what they’re talking about.”

Perhaps the investigation would be understandable if Blackpool had disgraced themselves at Villa Park. As it happens, only a late goal from James Collins prevented them from grabbing a well-deserved point. Holloway’s selection was justified by a typically buccaneering performance.

Blackpool have four games in twelve days. In the modern era, we’re constantly told that it’s a ‘squad game’. What is the point in assembling a squad only for the manager to be investigated by the FA on the first occasion he elects to make use of it?

As Holloway argues:

“I picked a team that I spent a lot of money on. The right-back (Chris Basham) cost me £1m. The Israeli centre-half (Dekel Keinan) is an international. Jason Euell was my captain last year. Ludovic Sylvestre, I paid £600,000 for him.”

To launch an investigation in to the selection of these players is an insult to them and their professionalism.

Also, it’s wildly inconsistent. Yes, Wolves were fined £25,000 last season, but would the FA ever examine the team selection of Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger on the occasions when they opt to rest their top stars? Equally, why weren’t Portsmouth fined when refusing to field David James purely so they didn’t invoke an expensive contract clause?

It is the managers’ prerogative to use the players at their disposal as they wish. They are already working under the conditions of the 25-man squad rule: if the Premier League accepts that list on 1st September, they have to at least grant the bosses the freedom to use those players in whichever way they deem fit.

Is there some kind of edict from the Premier League that Match of the Day shouldn’t focus on the darker side of football? It would be a reasonable explanation as to why they hardly ever look at bad tackles, or if they do they make a joke of it as they did with Wolves treatment of Joey Barton

The man involved in the incident which saw Bobby Zamora end up with a broken leg, Karl Henry, was very lucky not to get a red card last time out. Match of the Day pundits laughed as he embarked on a sequence of progressively worse fouls on Barton. Maybe a mild rebuke might have made him think about tackling Zamora differently yesterday.

pic via Arseblog

Let’s face it, tackles like the one to your left, are not a great advertisement for the English game. The studs-up, over the top of the ball tackle is about as dangerous as it gets, yet not one minute of analysis could be spared for it on last night’s show.

If they want to present a sanitised version of the Premier League then they’re doing the game a huge disservice. There were three or four incidents that could have been looked at during the Arsenal Bolton game, not one was mentioned. I understand people are more interested in the football but there has to be a balance.

The next time there’s a serious injury caused by a bad tackle they’ll sit there, hand wringing, dishing out mealy-mouthed platitudes which do nobody any good. Paul Robinson got away with a shocker, not even a yellow card, and he then had the temerity to do a Steven Taylor and pretend to be injured himself.

I’m not suggesting Robinson be hung, drawn and quartered, but some focus on his behaviour means referees and linesmen are more aware of it in future games. If Stuart Atwell and his assistant had been criticised for not seeing it and not dealing with it properly, it could ensure other officials will do their best to ensure things like that don’t go un-punished in the future. It helps raise standards. Ignoring incidents like this is counter-productive in the extreme.

The football is the most important part of any highlights show, that goes without saying, but unless there’s some effort to feature some of what’s wrong with the game then things will never change for the better. They have a responsibility not to laugh off or ignore serious foul play.

At the moment they’re failing miserably.

First goal?
Emmanuel Adebayor v Spurs

Winner?
Chelsea

Relegated?
Blackpool
Wolves
Stoke

Overachievers?
Bolton

Underachievers?
I was going to say Man United but it’s a foolish man who writes them off. I do wonder if Spurs can cope with the twin challenges of domestic and European football (should they get through their qualifying round). So, Spurs. Outside the top 6.

Player of the Year?
Cesc Fabregas

Best New Signing?
Has anyone actually made any signings?

The Dimitar Berbatov Award for Biggest Flop?
James Milner – impossible to see him providing any kind of value for money.

Most red cards?
As a team – Arsenal. As a player – Joey Barton.

First manager out the door?
Alex McLeish

Most likely club to enter administration?
Liverpool

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First goal?
Carlos Tevez in the opening fixture. (ps. I wrote this question, forgetting that the lunchtime kick-off makes it somewhat redundant.  Score.)

Winner?
Chelsea

Relegated?
Blackpool
Wolves
Newcastle

Overachievers?
Everton, again.  Moyes’ consistency is remarkable.

Underachievers?
Unless they make a couple of late signings, I expect Spurs to struggle under the added weight of a Champions League campaign.  Domestically, the competition from City, Liverpool and Everton is immense – to repeat their fourth place finish would be remarkable.  I don’t think they’ll manage it.

Player of the Year?
Michael Essien

Best New Signing?
It’s not signed and sealed yet, but Chelsea’s Ramires.  He’s Michael Essien mk II.  Which considering Chelsea already have Michael Essien mk I, seems a little unfair.

The Dimitar Berbatov Award for Biggest Flop?
Milner.  Although I’ve a sneaking suspicion Bebe could be homeless again before too long.

Most red cards?
With Mark Hughes’ arrival, I’ll go for a Fulham player: Dickson Etuhu.

First manager out the door?
Chris Hughton

Most likely club to enter administration?
Liverpool

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As ever, agreement, disagreement, hurled vegetables and abuse welcome.

Barcelona midfielder, Xavi Hernandez, is getting quite a reputation. Not for his sublime passing or the way he controls midfield for both his club and country, but for incessant comments about the biological make-up of Arsenal’s Cesc Fabregas.

He appears to be somewhat consumed by DNA. Look at what he’s been saying:

June 2010 – “He’s a footballer made up of Barca DNA. I don’t have any doubt that Cesc would triumph at Barca”

February 2010 – “Cesc is part of Barcelona’s DNA.”

October 2009 – “He is a football player with Barça DNA and he is showing at Arsenal that he is on another level.”

May 2008 – “Cesc Fabregas has Barcelona DNA”

Perhaps Xavi has ambitions to be a scientist or a CSI once his playing career is over but he really needs to focus on other things. It’s just not healthy for a footballer, who should be concentrating on the World Cup, to worry so much about the nucleotides of a fellow professional. A bit like John Terry knocking up Wayne Bridge’s ex, it is a line one should not cross, one of the great unspoken rules of the dressing room. Teddy Sheringham and Andy Cole famously fell out when Sheringham openly mocked the length of Cole’s polymers.

I am quite positive that Xavi has surreptitiously taken samples of Fabregas’s DNA. His constant talking makes that obvious. I can imagine that during one of the Spanish national team get-togethers, Xavi crept into Cesc’s bedroom as he slept and gently swabbed the inside of his mouth. However, it is highly unlikely, despite his enormous wealth, that Xavi has the technology or the know-how to do a full DNA test which would establish Cesc’s genetic make up once and for all.

So the more he talks about Cesc’s DNA the more foolish he makes himself look. He might have patented the two-drag back through pass with the back of the foot (the double heelix) but Xavi is no Watson or Crick.

Not by a long shot.

Roy Hodgson has accepted the BEEB’s shilling and joined Harry Redknapp,  Clarence Seedorf, Jurgen Klinsmann and Emmanuel Adebayor to comprise a formidable World Cup panel.

BBC bloke Philip Bernie gushed, ‘We are delighted. We will have on board two of the most respected English managers to add to an already great line-up.’

All I know Phil, is that my enemy’s enemy is my friend. The campaign to get Andy Gray binned starts here.

Sunderland striker Darren Bent said of his ommision from England’s World Cup squad:

I feel really disappointed. I have always said to myself, if you play well and do your best for Sunderland, then there is a chance you can go to the biggest tournament in the world. But obviously on this occasion it has not worked out.

And his disappointment is completely understandable. After being written off during his time at Spurs, Bent scored a whopping 24 Premier League goals for Sunderland this season. At a big club where you get lots of chances and good service that would be an impressive tally, at Sunderland where goals don’t come as easy it’s even more so.

Only Drogba and Rooney scored more; players like Tevez, Adebayor, Defoe, Berbatov and Torres were all left in his wake. And yet Bent missed out on going to the World Cup as a striker to Emile Heskey, a player who scored just 5 goals for his club in 42 appearances, only 3 of them in the Premier League. His last goal was Villa’s 4th in a 5-2 win over Burnley on February 21st. He has scored two goals in 2010.

Now, people might talk about how Heskey does ‘donkey work’ for the benefit of the team, but perhaps he does donkey work because he’s … well … a donkey. When Theo Walcott has been excluded from the England squad ostensibly because of his poor form how on earth does Capello justify the selection of Heksey over Bent?

Yes, he’s strong, but then so are lots of othe players. Yes, he’ll win you some headers, yes, he can hold it up now and again, but beyond that Heskey as a striker is decidely second rate. He won’t win you a game when you’re playing top class opposition, any decent defender can play him like a fiddle all day long. Bent is by no means perfect but he’s had a fantastic season, knows where the goal is, has pace and would have provided England with more threat.

Perhaps he’s a victim of England’s goalscoring midfield. Capello might think he can afford to take a striker who doesn’t score when he’s got Lampard and Gerrard. He knows they can pop up and grab a goal at any time.

Some might say the fact that he’s been picked constantly by England managers down the years is proof that he offers more to the team than he’s given credit for. Personally, I think a forward’s main job is to score goals, taking a player to the World Cup who really doesn’t do that often enough just doesn’t make sense to me.

David Gill has been Chief Executive of Manchester United since 2003. He must know the fans of the club well at this stage. Which makes his comments about the ‘Green and Gold’ protests all the more bizarre. Speaking to the Independent, he said:

The green and gold campaign and the momentum behind that can get a bit tiring. We understand people’s desire to protest and I think it is a minority. It’s a visible minority in the stadium.

Would we prefer not to have them [green and gold scarves]? Yes. I think that minority will go away. A lot of people understand what it means but a lot of them don’t.

Obviously he has to protect the position of the owners but it’s quite clear the Green and Gold protesters are a bit more than a minority protesting at against the Glazer ownership. They’re almost ubiquitous at this stage. There’s nearly more green and gold than red at Old Trafford on match day.

The United fans have seen the Glazers come in, load a club which was previously free of debt and highly profitable with the cost of their takeover and seen promises broken. Gill said they would never use the training ground or the stadium to mortgage the club, they have done just that and should things go wrong on a financial level the foundations of the club are at risk. It’s little wonder fans are protesting.

Gill’s comments are an insult to the fans who care about the long term future of their club and let’s be clear – United’s current level of debt makes that future far more uncertain than it should ever have been.

And what makes it worse is that Gill knows exactly the depth of feeling about the Glazer ownership. It was under his watch that a new club was formed, a breakaway founded by fans who could no longer tolerate the way Manchester United was being run. FC United of Manchester are growing steadily and improving all the time. Yet it should never be underestimated how much it costs people to turn their back on the club they have supported all their lives.

Gill has presided over the slow financial violation of one of England’s greatest football clubs. The idea that they might go under is inconceivable given the supporter base, the fame of the club and everything else, but United’s finances are a disaster waiting to happen.

Not only does he dismiss them as a minority, when clearly they are not, he insults their intelligence by suggesting they don’t know why they’re protesting.

You can’t help feeling Gill has scored an own goal of Andrés Escobar proportions here.