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Just had a look at the way the Champions League Qualification Rounds might work out now and by a strange quirk of fate- Liverpool's entry at the First qualifying Round means Fenerbahce move up to automatic group round qualification taking the slot normally reserved for the holders. That in turn probably means Rangers just make it into the top half of the Third Qualifying round seedings and might get Everton but wouldn't get the Mancs or Liverpool. However, a nightmare third qualifying round tie awaits Celtic: Man U, Liverpool, Real Madrid, Real Bettis, Inter.... etc etc are probably all in the other half of the draw. Conversely none of those top seeds would fancy getting Celtic (or Everton for Liverpool and the Continentals) and would fear facing the Ukrainians or the even more dangerous CSKA Moscow in the bottom half of the draw. Mancs and Real Madrid knocked back into the UEFA?- bliss! Should Liverpool make it to the Group stage, they will then become number 1 seeds again as Champions but could be drawn in any pot including one with an English club. Again the prospect of a daw against Everton (assuming they survive) becomes a possibility and apparently Chelsea would drop from the top seeds eight seeds so could face Liverpool at the Group stage.

The Guardian doing its bit of analysis. The key point they make is the £25m a year transfer figure is a cap by the lenders- it is quite possible the actual budget will be much lower as the Shareholders United has crunched Glazer's own numbers and shows that Glazer will have to sell to survive unless he has refinancing tied up. However, The Times has come up with a corker in its digging. One of the Bank Covenants Glazer has signed puts a £10m upper limit on transfer spending for this summer's transfer window. No wonder Ferguson is trying to offload Saha, ended up with Van Der Sar when he was looking at Buffon and is targeting Park from PSV when others are looking at Essien. The graphs in that Times article are very instructive. It shows Glazer assuming Man U stay within the existing broadcast rights deals and a consequent dip in broadcast revenues when the Sky deal is renegotiated thanks to the meddling fool in the European Commission. More than ever, it is obvious that Glazer has to rip the Premiership TV deal apart and destroy the finances of Blackburn Rovers (and 16 other Prem clubs) to avoid financial destruction himself.

The Independent points out that Glazer business plan includes no provision to repay the loans he's taken out. Oops!

I cannot believe the Liverpool fans who are moaning about being "only" let into the champs league at the first qualifying round stage. Current Liverpool pre-season looks like this: Jun 27 - Pre-season training begins Jul 12/13 EC Qual Round 1 Leg 1 Jul 16 v Bayer Leverkusen (venue TBA) - awaiting confirmation Jul 19/20 EC Qual Round 1 Leg 2 Jul 22 v FC Cologne (away) - awaiting confirmation Jul 26/27 EC Qual Round 2 Leg 1 Jul 27 v Smimizu S Pulse (away) Jul 30 v Kashima Antlers (away) Aug 2/3 EC Qual Round 2 Leg 2 Aug 9/10 EC Qual Round 3 Leg 1 Aug 13 - Premiership opening weekend Aug 17 - International Fixtures (e.g. Denmark v England) Aug 20 - Premiership week 2. Aug 23/4 EC Qual Round 3 Leg 2 Aug 26 v CSKA Moscow (to be played in Monaco) UEFA Super Cup Final Aug 27 - Premiership week 3 A doddle! The seedings apparently will work in such a way that in the third qualifying round, Liverpool and Man U would be in one half of the draw and Everton, Celtic and Rangers in thother half with country preference preventing an Everton v Manu match but not preventing Everton v Liverpool.

In all fairness, the Sky money is remarkably evenly divided (Chelsea earned less than double the bottom club from the Premiership this season) and the Prem didn't want the increased TV coverage which the EU forced on them in return for less revenue. The uneven spread of wealth is caused by - Blackburn being an impoverished area - Blackburn being such a small place which has always been the case - UEFA's Champions League which has pushed the earnings of the English clubs in it into the stratosphere. There is a general downwards trend in demand for the game- even Man U apparently are now only just selling out some games whereas previously they were massively over-subscribed. I doubt Sunderland will return to house full notices at the 48,000 seater Stadium of Light in the Prem next season.

Yo Ryan space made! Space made for Liverpool too- unanimous UEFA verdict means: Liverpool enter the Champs League at Qualifying Round 1 stage Liverpool get no "country protection" so they could draw the Mancs or Everton in Q round 3 depending on how this is interpreted for seeding purposes and could draw any English club in the Group stages- assuming they get there. The "English pot" of money from the Group stages is unchanged so the other four English will get less but Liverpool would get a lot less than if they had qualified by coming fourth. Liverpool's place in the UEFA Cup will not go to Man City as the next highest placed English club. So when Newcastle get knocked out of the Intertoto, just Notlob and Boro will represent the Prem in that competition... Implications for Liverpool- six competitive games before making it to the Group stages including playing the Super Cup in Monaco and a qualifying game in THE SAME WEEK. Plus they take a week (including two week-ends) out for the World Club Cup in mid-December. Chuck in the shortened season, and its odds on Liverpool will be fielding their Academy side in the League Cup and the Reserves in the FA Cup! Plus the prospect of them playing three Prem games a week at the season end if they progress well in the Cups and the weather is a bit bad.

The fans hit the ######

A flood of Glazer stuff this morning following The Times doing an expose of Glazer's business plans which essentially recycles The Independent story of last week-end. Possibly the most significant discovery if it has substance is lurking in the middle of this BBC story. If the money boys at Shareholders' United really can prove that there were manipulated spikes in the Zapata share price at the time the Glazers were using their Zapata shareholdings as collateral for borrowings to buy Man U, the Glazers are in deep trouble up to and including jail sentences. Speculation at the moment but with the Manc supporters no doubt re-energised in their hate campaign, the bloodhounds will be out. Sacking Bobby Charlton is inevitable if the Glazers want to keep the Man U business tight within the family to avoid public scrutiny- their usual modus operanda. There are other reports contradicting Charlton's imminent dismissal as a director. Bloomburg, the American financial newswire is very unimpressed by the Glazer deal for Man U. They point out that the rate of interest Glazer is paying on his borrowings is pretty well a record high for any borrowings for any major buyout. The Financial Community are clearly calling this one a very high risk of failure (and no doubt have collateral on most Glazer assets as well as Man U to back it up). Summing up the Glazers' business proposition, they are going to raise ticket prices by over 54% and look for a doubling in sponsorship by Merchandising United (tricky if the customers are revolting) In short they are looking to dump the whole of their £830m purchase (£34m in banking fees) onto the Manc supporters. Of course the hidden agenda is to wreck football by a grab at media rights to make the Glazers a shed load of cash out of the deal whilst they fleece the fans as they fight that one out in the Courts. This is The Times comment on the numbers- very little margin for error. Meanwhilst, the natives are turning nasty and the police have been called in.

Some snippets concerning the Glazers- The Glazer family are apparently deciding to conduct Man U business in Tampa and by video conference rather than face the risk of meeting Man U fans this side of the Atlantic. That will make Gill, Hunby and the reinstated Anson even more isolated and vulnerable as the people on the ground in Manchester. There was a statement by a Junior Minister in the House of Lords last night that the Office of Fair Trading should look at the Man U sale. I fully expect that the OFT will decline the invitation but if they do use the Glazer take over as a pretext to look into competition in football it would bring a new element of uncertainty to the game in general and the Mancs in particular. The Deloitte & Touche report on football finances has some interesting things to say about Chelsea. It does highlight that it is possible to grow football revenues rapidly- Chelsea up from £93m to £144m under Abramovich- but that has been in the back of massive investment and newly achieved football success (For Man U under the Glazers, there is little scope for investment and the club has already been reaping the revenue benefit of on-field success). Apparently Abramovich has set a four year target and plan for Chelsea to overhaul Man U as the world's "biggest" football club in revenue terms. To have such a well-funded and aggressive competitor headed by the Mancs' ex-CEO adds one more very significant difficulty for the Glazers. It will be interesting if the reported ultimatum given to RFW by the Glazers is true- win the Prem in 05/06 or you are out.

There is a bit of difference between China and Korea. The Glazer take over becomes ever more surreal. Having said a fond good bye to Gardner and the other two non-execs, they have reinstated the commercial director the Glazers voted off the Man U board at the last AGM. So much for their claim to be acting in the best interests of the club all the time. David Gill is in Florida learning about the detail of the Glazer plan they want him to implement. Remember Gill is the man who complained about lack of seeding when Man U went out to AC Milan in the last 16 of the Champs League (after Ferguson had come second in their Group to avoid the Spanish sides- allegedly) saying that with their level of investment, Man U deserved a guarranteed return or something to that effect.

Bolton are reporting very high demand for STs. Some parts of the ground are going onto waiting list and they expect they will set a new record of over 20,000 STs sold.

This is in the "I think I saw it somewhere" category but the amount of cash in the Champions League is allocated in some formula which links payment to the size of the TV audience and commercial contribution of that country. Therefore England's pot is worth a coefficient share appplied to the number of teams competing UP TO a maximum of four. That pot is divided equally between the number of English teams in the Group stages. Therefore the pot would be divided by 5 and not 4 if all the English clubs play in the Group Stage. Another sanity check- the Group Stages are worth a lot less than 32 x £25m although they have been worth about £20m each to English clubs- roughly double their worth to Scottish clubs.

Looks like Liverpool were going to get the nod to defend their trophy this Wednesday but.... Everton have realised that if Liverpool make it to the Group Stage (it is looking increasingly likely UEFA will come up with some killer schedule forcing Liverpool to play a qualifying round and the Super Cup), then the English clubs' share of the Group money would be split five ways (assuming the Mancs, Liverpool and themselves all survive) costing them a cool £5m. So the other scousers are objecting now.

Dickov was a muscle strain rather than a tear. Could not be repaired surgically but needed at least four weeks complete rest.

Whilst Savage's image was appearing in the role of a tart and vicar all rolled into one ("modelling" the new away kit), he was also having groin surgery yesterday.

You are joking- England in the Final not selling out? (especially as the opposition is likely to be Germany) Anyway, a little matter of beating Denmark, not losing to Sweden, and surviving a semi against opposition ranked well ahead of us.

Glad that everyone enjoyed that game and are looking to get down to Ewood for the next two England games. Just a thought- in the now slightly less unlikely event of England making it to the Final, Ewood will not be big enough to accommodate the numbers who will want to see it. Better get your tickets now.

That is just a brilliant web-site! The scrap over football's future initiated by Glazer is getting closer. Taken from World Soccer News: The SU spokesman said: "Glazer's business plan projects EBITDA (operating profits) in the year to July 31 2006 of 57.1 million pounds (103 million dollars) and in the next year July 31 2007 of 89.1 million pounds (161 million dollars). "Where can he find another 32 million pounds (58 million dollars) of operating profit in one year's trading? Manchester United supporters are taking legal advice over a possible challenge to Malcolm Glazer's bid to take the club into private ownership. I very much doubt the supporters would succeed but they might assemble enough of a legal argument to delay Glazer- having bought 76% of Man U, Glazer is cash out to the tune of £600m already and time is money as they say... Putting things into context, there are only 18 clubs in the world with turnover (total sales income) of more than the £57m - the amount of operating profit (up a cool 125% over Man U's current profitability) Man U are projected to make by Glazer in the year beginning just 26 days from now. Glazer has to do that in the context of being friendless in his customer base with a large vocal and highly influential minority hell bent on stopping him. Undoubtedly Glazer has a very good anti-PR firm working for him the way that news about Man U has been killed in the media. It is significant that the most commercially- managed voice in soccer, David Beckham, is the only one which has said anything vaguely positive about Glazer. I still have not seen anything that convinces me that Glazer will be in anything but deep trouble with this gamble.

This morning's gossip has Bowyer being bid for by West Ham for £1.5m and Ambrose wanted by Charlton for a similar amount. So Bellamy is sitting tight at St James's whilst players Souness is reported to want to keep are quite possibly on their way. Couldn't happen to a nicer club....

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).