Enfield Exile wrote:I am sure a post on the Swiss Ramble blog will appear within a week or so (http://swissramble.blogspot.com/). Some cracking reads on there. Hadn't come across it before.

Enfield Exile wrote:I am sure a post on the Swiss Ramble blog will appear within a week or so (http://swissramble.blogspot.com/). Some cracking reads on there. Hadn't come across it before.

I think the response of the press to De Jong is probably more down to the World Cup than the fact that he plays for City. It was inevitable that the press would be waiting for any future transgressions. It does seem to me though that for every criticism by a journalist at least one ex player has come out in his defense so I do not think that the coverage has been too unbalanced.

I suppose its inevitable that City will get stick. I think the worst period was on the sunday/monday of the second week of the season when it seemed like the press as a whole had collectively decided to round on the club. Its not unusual for City to get bad press coverage in the sunday/monday papers, but usually its after we've played! My personal favourite that weekend was Michael Calvin's article in the Mirror "Why Football needs Man City's Muppet Show to Fail", a great example of well balanced journalism. But its a huge improvement on the previous affectionate but patronising attitude to the club.

Evening standard has a cracking article on Man utd's financial problems at the moment, Well researched and Utd fans will be spittin feathers.

Not necessarily. We make, or made, quite a lot of money as a club, whilst our wage bill was the 5th/6th largest in the league, it might even be the 7th now, but we were one of the more profitable clubs due to our high'ish revenues, yet moderately high wage bill. I doubt we'll make anywhere near as much due to the early KO in the CL last year, and the lack of qualification for the CL this year. We have a huge shirt sponsorship at the moment with Standard, whilst the potential to sell naming rights to any potential stadium will be huge. The potential to make profit at our club is huge, with a new stadium bringing in higher crowds and sponsorship deals, we could be right up there with United and Arsenal if we're ran the right way. We have a world class academy (admittedly, it hasn't bore much fruit over recent years, but Benitez left it in fantastic shape), we have an absolutely huge fan base that stretches to all corners of the globe, with the potential for that to grow still to be fully tapped into, whilst we still have some semi-decent players at the club, although the current coach is completely incapable of managing the current crop of players, there are still plenty of dire players that shouldn't be here.

I hope this rumour isn't true.

i wouldnt see a problem if either man utd or liverpool took a bit of a financial tumble and struggle for a few years as both have the structure to make a comeback once theyve steadied the ship.self reliance is better then this sugar daddy business thats taken over for the past 5 or 6 years.its a pity footy will never have a salary cap to make sugar daddies less influential

If anyone needs cheering up, spend 6 minutes on YouTube watching that hilarious 'Dear Mr Hicks' video. Cringeworthy beyond description. Not sure what it's supposed to achieve but maybe Liverpool's QC can find a way to shoehorn it into his submissions next week.

I quite like it, and its targetted at the right bloke. Gilette seems to be in the shadows for me

I watched it last week I was embarrassed for them. Great way to spend 6 minutes.