stevegrant

That much is obvious by Michel Platini's continued comments about trying to bring in various rules and regulations governing debts, player quotas, etc. Basically, all the things that ensure the top Premier League teams succeed on a regular basis in the Champions League and reap all the financial rewards available there are things that Platini wants to place restrictions on. For example: :: Foreign ownership :: Levels of solvency :: Spending power :: Home-grown players All of those are currently in the favour of Man United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Man City because they are all owned by foreign investors, they all have massive levels of debt, despite which they still have much bigger spending power over most of the rest of Europe and they don't include many home-grown players. Arsenal buck the trend a little bit because they are still (mostly) owned by British people and they run a fairly tight financial line, although they do have a large debt on the stadium it's a very manageable one with annual income of £200m, although because they don't have the foreign ownership with massive bundles of their own money being used, they don't have anywhere near the same spending power as the others.

True, although in both of their cases it's been due to substantial investment from either a wealthy owner (Dave Whelan) or a generous local business (Kingston Communications). If Hull were still at Boothferry Park and Wigan at Springfield Park, they'd both be in League Two.

Won't ever happen simply due to the sums of money involved. Football at the highest level is more of an entertainment business than a sport these days. Can you honestly see ManYoo and Chelsea agreeing that they're not allowed to spend more in wages than Hull, Stoke and West Brom, thus wiping out one of the main advantages they have over the rest of the Premier League (and European leagues)? United have colossal revenue streams, but what's the point in generating all that revenue if they're being restricted in how they spend it? They'd end up with £150m worth of profits every year with nothing to spend it on... apart from transfer fees, which would then get even more ridiculous than they are already!

Rather pathetically, I've only had it a year. I've got no complaints about the actual running speed of it, the only two issues I've got are a) the battery life (which I knew about when I bought it, but I didn't know I was going to be getting a job in London a year later and wanting to use it away from a mains supply for more than 2 hours a day) and b) the loose connection on the screen. I suspect that if I'd spent a bit more on it originally, I might have had a bit more luck on both those issues, regardless of whether that money was spent on a MacBook or a "normal" laptop. If a second-hand MacBook is going to make financial sense then I'd be interested in knowing where I could get one from, but I do quite like the safety net of the year's manufacturer warranty with a fairly expensive purchase such as this.

I wonder if a new feature will be "not full of loads of ridiculous bugs that should have been detected in the development stage, let alone in beta testing"?

Whoopee... ANOTHER browser that I've got to use to test my work, which no doubt will have various little oddities that differ from the W3C standards that the developers thought would be "more intuitive", but in actual fact just makes development more difficult and confusing.

I like the look of that, but at the moment the cost is prohibitive (even the MacBook is cheaper! )

Following Essruu's comments here about the MacBook's battery life of "up to 6 hours", I'm sorely tempted to look into getting a MacBook purely so I've got pretty much guaranteed battery life for my daily commute to and from London. However, here is anybody's opportunity to find me a "normal" laptop (i.e. not a Mac) that is cheaper than a MacBook - current cheapest find is £600 - and has somewhere approaching the same sort of battery life. I've discovered that all the software I would need are freely available on all platforms (XP, Ubuntu, OS X), and I really couldn't give a **** about style - although I would prefer something fairly light and don't need a 17" widescreen or anything ridiculous like that. What I'm interested in is a laptop that a) has a longer-lasting battery than the 2-hour piece of crap I've currently got, and b) is cost-effective (I'm yet to be convinced that £600 fits into that bracket).

Two teams, Athletico Eastleigh and Graddidge Albion, have pulled out of the league, so we're now down to a 10-team league. We are also quite fortunate that we had been drawn against Athletico Eastleigh in the first round of the Trophyman Cup, so we should now get a bye through to round 2.

I've had requests for fixtures from the following teams: 18 Oct - Watford (home) 21 Feb - Preston (home) 14 Mar - QPR (home) 21 Mar - Preston (away) - Saints at Blackpool If you're interested in playing in any/all of these games, please let me know.

Pro Evo is surprisingly good, IMO.

Don't forget their "fact-finding" mission in Seville this time last year where they just happened to bump into Juande Ramos...

Venue: Green Park, Millbrook. Kick-off: 10am Provisional squad: Aaron Austen Sev Roberts Kev Thornton Ian Austen Dan Ridout Lee Chamberlain Keiron Hatcher Stu Holloway Mike Florit Chris Knight Rich Barnes Steve Grant Scott Griffin

Administration has been coming for years, last season's spending didn't really accelerate things too much. It was obviously the final nail in the coffin, but they'd started throwing the soil onto it long before last season.

Yeah I know, but it would probably be even more unworkable to do it that way. Can you imagine ManYoo accepting that they can only pay the same amount in salaries as Wigan, Hull or Stoke, when they bring in 6 or 7 times their revenue? They would (quite legitimately from a business perspective) class that as a restriction of trade. There is no "fair" way of doing it now. With clubs generating their own revenue rather than clubs generating revenue for the league as a whole (as I believe is the case with other sports that operate salary caps), there is absolutely no way they could impose restrictions designed to even out the playing field. It works in various American sports because the restrictions have (as far as I'm aware) been in place ever since the competitions began, although quite how LA Galaxy fit David Beckham into their wage structure I'm not too sure.

But then there would be only a handful of teams in each league. Michel Platini was saying the other day that he wanted to investigate the finances of clubs and only allow those who have unsustainable debts to enter UEFA competitions (presumably another of his ways to prevent English clubs being successful, if you listen to the conspiracy theorists ). However, I really don't see how that could ever be enforced. Those in charge would just say "I'm the owner, it's my money and I've written off the debt to the club (except for that secret IOU for £500m that's locked away in the safe)", and there would be nothing UEFA or anyone else could do about it. Salary capping is a waste of time, what's the point in enforcing a 50% wages/turnover ratio when Arsenal (not a particularly world-renowned club) bring in £200m revenue? That means they're still free to spend £100m on wages, which is equivalent to 40 Emmanuel Adebayors on £50k a week.

Where's the inaccuracy in that? AFC Bournemouth have not paid a transfer fee for a player for years. That's a fact. I'm sure Anderton's not giving his services for free, but he's also very clearly not the reason they went into administration.

Also the fact that Real were, pretty publicly, touting Robinho around as a makeweight in any potential Cristiano Ronaldo deal probably told Robinho that they weren't all that bothered about keeping him, so no, it's probably not a "sporting reason", rather a "morale" reason insomuch as he's now at a club who are quite clearly absolutely delighted (and probably a bit stunned!) to have him.

Do MacBooks come in a "mini-MacBook" flavour? If so, I would be potentially interested. However, as a lot of my work involves testing websites on Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari under different OS environments, does it support the ability to dual-boot into Windows and Ubuntu? If the answer to that is also "yes", what's the battery life like on it? Ideally, I'd like a new laptop with a battery that will last at least 3 hours before needing to be recharged. And then of course, where's the cheapest place to buy one from?

I suggest you re-read what I wrote as I never said that :confused: In particular:

It's all so hypocritical. There's something inherently wrong when Berbatov, who had been solely granted permission to speak to Manchester City, is spotted by TV cameras shaking hands with Alex Ferguson and David Gill at Old Trafford...

As much as I couldn't give a toss about Kevin Bond, I think he's had so many mitigating circumstances in the last two years that have led AFCB to where they are currently that this decision can be seen as a bit harsh. Someone told me a few weeks ago that they only have 9 players registered on their payroll, and even then they are probably still spending more than they can afford. The remaining players are loans, so they don't have to pay the wages. They were deducted 10 points last season, which was pretty much the cause of their relegation. They went down by one point. Administration can often be attributed to the manager spending loads of money on crap players on high wages. Bournemouth haven't paid a transfer fee for a player for about 10 years. Their financial situation has been teetering on the brink for a long time, pretty much since they came out of administration back in the mid-90s, and the sale and leaseback of Dean Court as well as the contracting-out of the catering and merchandising departments (so basically the sale/giving-away of every part of the club that generated revenue!) meant that it was only a matter of time before they ended up in administration again.

As evidenced by going for a relatively cheap manager and putting season ticket and matchday ticket prices through the roof.

81/7, Billy Taylor takes the catch 131 needed off 9 overs

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