So they've rigged it for Milan to stay in the CL!

Liverpool are reported to have had a £6.2M offer accepted.

So Juve and Fiorentina go into next season's Champs League and AC go into the UEFA if I read that correctly??? Will UEFA agree? As for Juve keeping two blatantly rigged Scudettos, have the Italians no shame? Inter fans will be furious. Carry on fixing lads. Unfortunately, this looks like it could be bad news for Rovers- will be more difficult to keep Neill and the trickle down will stop/be reversed. Have to say the Mancs have missed out big time and Real and Barca are the real winners in this Italian farce. Of course the Italian League will be delayed- they haven't started on the likes of Reggina, Sienna and Messina yet. And what about all the allegations going back to 2001?

Don't you need to add Sergio Peter to the list?

Liverpool have bid £3.5m for Pennant who is not for sale but will sell him for a higher bid according to Karren Brady. At this rate, Liverpool will have more jailbirds on the pitch than in the stands. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/t...ity/5213422.stm

Sorry to spoil the general high spirits but the Mirror report Arsenal taking a close look at Ryan Nelsen as the Sol Campbell replacement. That is the one transfer this summer which could really crock us.

UEFA have told the English game that the way we appoint referees opens us up to corruption: http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,1828196,00.html Personally, I feel the FA is the most curruptible of England's footballing bodies being an arcane mix of blazers and the professional game. I'd only want the refereeing set-up changed if the Burns Report were implemented in full. As it is, having the FA, Prem and League all involved makes it a little bit more difficult for a bad apple from anyone of those organisations to turn the whole barrel. As far my personal opinion, I'll be convinced the English refereeing system is not bent when I start seeing unbiased decisions at Old Trafford.

I always enjoy reading this sort of thread than the infantile puerile (NcCarthy's better than Mido) stuff which populates 75% of the transfer thread. Great to get the first hand experiences of people who were there. From seeing snatches of the game live, my impressions were: - Hamburg were not mucking about - Hamburg were playing at very close to full strength at the start - Rovers did not look pre-season rusty until the subs started - Agathe didn't convince as a full back or wing back Overall, I think it is excellent that Rovers have got four continental top league opponents, two of which are Champs League clubs and one went a long way in the UEFA last season. The portents are there for Rovers to be better prepared than most come the start of the season. Makes a change from stuffing non-entitities 10-0 in the Souness days.

My feelings exactly neekoy. As for the £5m fee, it is a sign that Newcastle are under such financial pressure that they have had to do a deal which almost certainly has massive contingent performance payments attached. Two explanations of why Chelsea got rid here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtm...25/sfnche25.xml The funny thing is that the reporter seems to have forgotten that Blackburn Rovers play in England.

A general overview on the continuing impact on Italian football for some time to come: http://www.footballingworld.com/index.php?..._from=&ucat=84& The financial impact begins to be assessed: http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/23/business/tv24.php

Whilst Newcastle were triumping in Lillestrom in the Intertoontoon (poor show by our Norwegian friends I thought), Villarreal were biting the dust againstr SK Maribor. For Rovers, that is one less team seeded above us in the UEFA whilst it might mean that it will make a move by Rovers for Valencia a more attractive proposition for all concerned.

I think it has been pretty well substantiated that Spuds had gone on to offer significantly more than £5m. Somehow, I don't think Abramovich/Kenyon were running a Toon Philanthropic Society when it came to flogging off Duffer. Anyway, Michael Owen won't even have his cruciate ligament operation until September as he has to wait for the cartilege operation swelling to go down and fully heal before he can go under the knife again.

Thought he looked promising today- better than I could remember him playing at Wigan and in a physical opening to the "friendly", it was good to see a Champs League defence not really fancying taking him on. Much better control than Shefki- set up MGP's lovely strike nicely. If JR scores more than 7 Prem goals in 33 appearances (including subs), he'll be an improvement on the Kuqimonster.

Pretty encouraging- it was Hamburg's 5th pre-season game and they had all their World Cup players back plus new signing Kompany. Matteo conceded a free kick within a minute of coming on and Hamburg struck the post from the resulting corner. Obviously we are without Neill and Nelsen at the moment but defense will need deepening and strengthening. Jon Douglas seemed to do well after he came on. Rover6 will be delighted to note.

How extremely prescient of you. Micky Gray was replaced by McEveley a minute before Hamburg equalised.

There seemsto be a head of steam building behind reports that Juve's 30 points penalty for next season will be reduced but that AC's penalty will be increased. In a further blow to Italian "big clubs", the FIGC voted to bring in collective bargaining for Serie A clubs for 2007/8 thus ending the ability of individual clubs to negotiate their own deals and favourable coverage. This looks like a £50m+ hit to Juve and counting...

Given a choice between Liverpool, Spuds and Newcastle next season, any sane footballer would chose Newcastle of course. Looks like Fat Freddie is banking 2007/8's TV money early if he is going to spend substantially more after splashing the £10m on Duff.

The Appeals verdict will be delivered on Tuesday. Both Lazio and Fiorentina have stated they are going to the Civil Courts to contest the verdict so they seem to be pretty cerain about the outcome! Meantime, a new Sporting Tribunal is convening in Naples to hear the case of Reggina's use of the "Moggi Method" in seven games over the last two seasons. With still five more named clubs being investigated and one more under suspicion, quite where is all this ending up? Not directly related but Reggio di Calabria has one scary airport to fly into. On my last (and it will be the last given the choice) flight there, I was enormously grateful to the A319's fly-by-wire system. First the captain stalled us so the engines went full power with a big kick in the back treating us to a roaring fly between two hills then we had an aborted landing on the dinky little runway. Sure Reggio is notorious for wind shere and sudden tail winds off the mountains but it turned out the Captain was handed over by Catania to Reggiana... only Reggiana had forgotten to answer. So we were powered down, under carriage down and wing flap extensions forgotten about as the Captain was yelling at Reggiana Control Tower for clearance half way through final approach. Relegation to C2 would seem the least appropriate verdict...

Quite a bit of amateur dramatics in the last few posts. 1) The appreciation in the value of Stamford Bridge over what RA paid for Chelski means he could blow another £195m and still be in the black on the whole deal. There is the Cobham training ground worth a few bob as well which has been paid for out of those losses. In fact, were RA to walk away from Chelsea tomorrow, he'd probably have doubled his money and had a lot of fun doing it. 2) Having achieved what they have on the football field means that CFC are heading to being self-sustaining within the foreseeable future. Their Prem contract will be worth about 50% more next summer. 3) RA has re-cycled all the assets that made his money In Russia so there is nothing for Putin to take off him. He has kept the right side of Putin and far enough out of the way. The current exercise is almost self-invited to make himself more difficult for an increasingly confident Putin to go after. 4) Even if Putin does go for him, RA is well down the list of British passport holders whom Putin would like to see behind bars.

Yes, I thought most of the posts on this thread had a tenuous relationship with the facts as presented in public.

Some nice pictures here: http://www.kipax.com/

Jemal Johnson is not in the party of 27 flying out to Germany this afternoon. Some of the youngsters are though.

I thought it was rather sweet. After all, Uncle Jack got us the Premiership for all our birthdays one year.

Nice pictures Slater Scott. That looked like an undulating ploughed field surrounded by what must be the worst stadium in the Football League by some distance. Good practise in case we get drawn to go to Gretna in the UEFA Cup! I guess Roberts, Jeffers, Derbyshire is just about an ideal list of scorers for a 3-0 win in the first pre-season game. Hope Roberts is OK.

That was taken from the local Maltese paper. I have seen it reported that a separate Sporting Tribunal altogether will look at Udinese, Siena, Messina, Arezzo and Avellino and that Messina's reinstatement into Serie A (they were relegated last season) is very much in doubt. The Sporting Life article is completely unclear as to whether the two additional clubs are completely new to the scandal. The terms of reference of the Sporting Tribunal which handed down the relegations and points deductions was only seasons 2004/5 and 2005/6. Roberto Mancini of Internationale said publicly when the scandal broke that Juve had been match fixing since 2001. Presumably in the intervening period, his deposition has been taken and could well be in the 300 additional pages of material now being considered.