Players play best (and mangers manage best) when they feel 1) confident, secure 2) Relaxed 3) Focussed 4) Aware of what is expected of them and how to achieve these targets. Blackburn Rovers are an excellent provider of those four things. Spurs, West Ham and Newcastle United are extraordinarily poor at it. Very good point and something to be extremely wary of if Rovers change ownership.

Shame he won't miss any more Newcastle games assuming he's a good boy inside.

That is why I wrote the Glazers and not Man U would be wiped out- I should have said the Glazers' control over Man U would be wiped out. Come on its very obvious what the Glazers have done- they have had the balls to gamble much bigger than any other people were willing to do and had the reputational collateral of having done enough good deals in the past to gamble almost 100% with other people's money. They got the deals away to buy Man U when market conditions were ideal for doing this. There is no way they could pull the same trick this summer. And in part therein lies their problem: Things that have gone in their favour are - On field performance has been ahead of plan and budget - Coming through the two year limitation on transfers without damaging the on-field performance - The collective Sky/Setanta deal being more than anticipated - The willingness of the Mancs to pay 12% per annum price increases four years running and swallowing the forced buying of seats for Cup matches Things that have not gone in their favour are - The famed intercontinental marketing expertise is making very modest headway in terms of building revenues and profits - Failure to get good deals on rolling debt in the first twelve months did not cut interest charges in the way the Glazers hoped - Failure to take an unattractive deal to refinance 18 months ago whereas now the market conditions mean there are simply no deals to be done - As a consequence, debt is increasing and interest charges growing faster than the rate of growth in revenue and earnings before interest depreciation and amortisation - And they are now at the mercy of a Hedge Fund which can put Directors on the Board any time it wants. No doubt it is extracting a high price in terms of management information being supplied in detail and very frequently. The Glazer high wire act continues gratis the Premier League title and the trip to Moscow but it just means if they over-balance in any way, they will fall higher and heavier. Do you know how they are handling the May 2010 deadline by the way? Indebtedness of Man U and Chelsea. Two points worth remembering- Jack Walker also used interest free loans to Rovers which the Trust converted into ordinary shares when the change of accounting rules meant that the club would struggle to maintain its ordinary business if they were not converted. The fact Chelsea have not done that means they must be getting 100% of their ordinary finance from Abramovich and not using banks. - Abramovich has spent a larger sum on luxury yachts and airplanes than some estimates put the Glazer family wealth at.

Imagine facing all that white the morning after the night before..... I was reaching for an aspirin just looking at that picture after a long day on the go.

How do you work that one out Eddie? If there were a 20% reduction in money available all round in the EPL, Rovers would have temporary pain but with the Trust ownership and no unmanageable debts, we'd come through relatively OK. As it is, the Rovers' board always has to plan for us having a poor season- finishing 17th rather than 7th would probably take 15% out of the Rovers' income. The Glazers on the other hand would be wiped out- £40m less per year to service debt which in turn would be unsupported by enterprise value as that would fall by much more than 20% because all the growth assumptions would have gone through the window.

If Hughes goes for him, he's good enough. If not, he's not.

OK look at it this way- In the year Man U recaptured the Premier League title, their overall debt increased by 50% more than Spurs' total turn over. About half that increase in debt came through Man U buying the likes of Hargreaves, Anderson, Nani and Vidic on the never never. And that is the unfair advantage that Platini is talking about sorting out which most certainly would be good for the rest of the Premiership and a reason why I am very nervous about Rovers' ownership going that way. Why do you think Tevez is saying he hopes Man U will buy him in the papers today? Because he is there on loan and the way things are looking, Man U might well never exercise their option to buy him for the simple reason they are not able to.

Platini raises the issue of withdrawing UEFA licenses from indebted clubs again. The table underneath is a year out of date- United's debts had grown by another £115m when the latest accounts were filed at Companies House last week.

According to the BBC: Newcastle are set to beat north-east rivals Middlesbrough for the signature of Galatasaray winger Arda Turan, a deal which could lead to Damien Duff leaving St James' Park I'd rather remember Duffer in the blue and white halves in his prime.

95% of this board is ABU. The facts are the facts. So Man U win the Premiership and reach the final of the CL. Even if they win the CL the fantastic double they will have achieved will earn them £80m combined from and the EPL and UEFA and be ....... NOT ENOUGH TO PAY THIS YEAR'S INTEREST BILL

As the build-up to the Champions League final begins with Ronaldo giving an ambiguous interview, I couldn't help but reflect how grateful the rest of football should be to the Glazers. The combined cost to Man U of the Glazer intervention is already going north of £250m - interest charges of over £200m in the three years' published accounts to date - transaction costs (the cost of buying Man U) by the Glazers of £42m (admitted publicly) - defence costs by the plc (the costs to Man U of trying not to be bought by the Glazers) of £25m Set against that, the total additional revenue to Man U because of the Glazers is certainly much less than £100m - the amount the AIG sponsorship exceeds the next highest sponsor bidding price (that is assuming the Glazers made that happen) - the rest is made up of ripping off the Manc fans in higher seat prices, MUTV fees and merchandising costs. There are two realities: 1) Apart from ripping off the Manc fans, the Glazers had no magic marketing formula and shown no innovative skills whatsoever in extending the reach of the Manc empire that the plc was not already involved in (even the extension of OT to 76,000 was already in build) whilst other stadium expansion plans have been shelved indefinitely. 2) The world has been spared from the RFW running round with an extra £200m in his pocket which would undoutedly have funded the most formidable football squad ever assembled. For that the rest of football has every reason to be truly thankful that the Glazers have crippled the Mancs. And in true cash terms, MUFC has to spin off another £billion+ in interest and repayments before its balance sheet is restored to the strength it had as a plc.

The LT has reported Matt's hernia operation was a success and he should be in great shape after four weeks' convalescence.

There was a real hoot when Score did its season's end lists. Ray Stubbs chose Kenwynne Jones as his buy of the season and Gavin Peacock pointed out that his choice for flop of the season- Darren Bent- had scored more goals than Kenwynne Jones had. Of course no Rover mentioned there either.

I was being ironic.

What a surprise, not even an honourable mention in the team of the season.

You've answered your own point r6. Olsson good enough, rest sadly are not.

Let's hope he's minded to play a blinder against Villa as he seeks alternative employment.

Berner was bought at the same time as Rovers bought a highly injury-prone left back whose number of appearances at Liverpool from kid to age 25 will be eclipsed by his number of appearances for Rovers in the first week of next season. We bought a player with 19 international caps and numerous UEFA Cup appearances as experienced cover. Exactly what any club with serious top ten and European aspirations should do and always will do in those circumstances. Warnock has proved a big success at Rovers, has kept fit and benefitted from regular starts (similar to Roque up front). But that was by no means certain 18 months ago and so Berner was as essential a signing as the Axe. If both Berner and the Axe are getting close to superfluous now, it is a measure of how the Rovers are developing as a team and a squad. Young players are part of the picture if they get to the EPL level on the training pitch or out on loan- Derbyshire and Olsson are; Neillsen by repute is; Gallagher and Peter very tenuously and the rest are aspirants. We go into the last game of the season with £2.25m and a get out of jail card for UEFA qualification resting on it. No way are youngsters ever going to be bloodied unless they are for sure going to make a positive impact. We tried a youngster against Coventry and for whatever reasons, Rovers produced the worst result since we were promoted back to the Premiership. For all of the arguments to the contrary, Hughes is handling selection to the first team 100% correctly so far as youngsters go. Lucky breaks (combinations of senior squad injuries and suspensions) come along every season- it is about having youngsters with the skill and physical and mental strength to seize the moment when it is presented, not when they might think they are ready. That said, there does seem to be something wrong with the running of the Academy/Reserves set up but it is a different issue from selection to the senior squad or the first team.

oops! Rijkard is out of Barcelona so one of Sparky's old clubs is looking for a Manager. Both Barca and Real Madrid have made unlikelier appointments in the past.

I would be happy if he comes back and happy if he doesn't. Lucas has various big investment plans in Oz for when he finishes playing and the Wham Lucash deal was all part of the plan. He's likely to be offered the same as Ljungberg (GBP3m) to go away from Upton Park but he is sure to still have his eye on the $$$. Lucas' problem is that he has slipped from being the highly rated player he was at ewood and I would be amazed if a Big 4 would be interested now. However, there are enough clubs with deep pockets for wage bills around for someone to snap him up before Rovers would be a realistic option so the Lucash worriers needn't get bothered about it. Could be a natural fit for the barcodes depending on who or what is running the show up there.

No but there will be howls about Chelsea having bought it if Wigan do their stuff on Sunday.

I have consistently said that Abramovich has been onto a winner financially at Chelsea almost irrespective of how much cash he pumps into the club because of the underlying property values of 14 acres in Chelsea. Been interesting to look back at this thread and no, at no point did I say Man U would have gone under with their loans by now. The indebtedness on the books of Man U has grown from £530m at the time the Glazers bought Man U to £666m last summer. Annual interest costs have gone from £64m to £81m so the average cost of borrowing has gone up despite the expectation that the borrowings would be restructured to dramatically reduce the average cost of debt. The hedge fund position is the interesting one. They will have the rights to appoint 25% of the board members of both Red Football and Man U if, as seems likely, Man U missed the target of £74m EBITDA in the 2007 numbers- the terms of the funding were disclosed when Man U was still publicly quoted. £58m loss, add back £81m interest means they would have had to have charged £51m in tax and depreciation for EBITDA to be £74m. I think the tax and depreciation charges are likely to be considerably less than £51m bearing in mind there were two years with a £20m transfer spending cap that Man U kept within. The Hedge Fund have the rights to appoint all the Directors and to seek a buyer for the club if their £235m loan plus the rolled up interest is not repaid by May 2010. An interesting point of course is that Tevez is still on loan from MSI and according to that agreement, Man U have still to find another £35m over the next three years after which ownership will pass from MSI to Man U. These are facts, not my opinion.

Agreed- Rovers have huge issues over what happens when Sparky moves on as any in-coming Manager will need a pot of spending money and his own people. But thankfully we are not in the position of needing a major corporate finance transaction to stop a Hedge Fund from exercising its contractual right and walking in to take the keys off the current owners 30 months from now with a track record of having failed to restructure the loans when the financial climate was much more forgiving than it is now. Those published numbers are not what the Glazers had in mind to be showing 30 months into their tenure at OT. There is a pretty clear admission they cannot fund debt obligations out of current income and the gap which was narrow last year has widened horribly. All they can do at the moment is sit tight, keep talking and hope for the best. Deals which could be funded at 18% (what they are paying for the most expensive money) are simply unfundable now whilst the 11% interest rate deals which covers a lot of their loans would probably cost north of 15% on their risk profile now. The Glazers might be lucky in having interest charged in devalued dollars (that would partly explain the reduced interest charge compared with the previous year) but they are hardly in a strong position to call the FX shots against the lending institutions next time round.

This awful opinion piece on the BBC web site says exactly how the BBC views the Premier League and Rovers' place within it.

Sure Eddie, and which Manager of the calibre Man U are likely to want is going to be happy with RFW still around. Remember what happened when Sir Matt stepped down? And the timing of RFW's retirement- his decision or the club's? That could turn nasty.