NAMING RIGHTS THREAD: Liverpool really won't win the Premiership 2010-2011

£10m worth of corner.

Someone should put in a £15m bid for Rory Delap next transfer deadline day just for the lols.

Yeah, or a £35 million bid for Andy Carroll.

£35m well worth it to remind Newcastle of their place

Nobody would be that stupid surely?

ahahaha - nice break, but that was one unemphatic debut strike

I think that was going wide

rip noodle vague

Sturridge! But who for?

Daniel Sturridge has gone tae fuck

gary neville "one of the great right backs" now.

Heard a story at the weekend about some people who met Gary Neville in a pub, getting pissed the night before a Man United game. They asked him what he was doing and he said "well I'm not playing". They asked how he knew that and Neville replied "because I used to be good, and now I'm shit".

(Actually this might just have come off ILX, I can't remember)

The way I heard it he said "because Sturridge has gone to Chelsea".

Yeah it was posted up thread. I understand all non-Utd fans despise him but Neville is definitely one of the best right-backs in the premiership era, despite his limitations.

lol at that painfully strained suarez highlights reel

"and he's away", defender cuts it out
"and that's brilliant", defender cuts it out
"always moving", er yeah well done

gary neville "one of the great right backs" now.

― I see what this is (Local Garda), Wednesday, 2 February 2011 23:02 (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

wasn't this "more like best premiership right back ever" tbf? not sure i'd argue with that. albert ferrer maybe.

Former Liverpool striker John Aldridge has branded Fernando Torres a "fake and a fraud who has spat in the faces of the Liverpool supporters who idolised him" following the Spaniard's £50m move to Chelsea.
Full story: Daily Mail

Also known as "a transfer".

Gary Nev tbh only Cafu and Alves beat him for the past 15 years, even if he is a cunt.

Cafu

The Scottish one or the Brazilian one? :-)

Denying that GNev had his day as one of the best RBs in the world is straight-up challops. He's still got a really punchable face though, and his star's been fading for years.

Why announce it yesterday? Was he hoping for a wee last move away during the window and went "ah fuck it" when he realised he wasn't getting one?

It means he can fuck off and join Sky asap.

That decision is not Gary Neville's to make.

Tottenham's captain Ledley King has had his groin operation delayed by a week because the defender was unable to find his passport in time to fly to a clinic in Germany. King was supposed to have surgery yesterday but an exasperated Harry Redknapp explained after last night's 1-0 victory at Blackburn that things had not gone according to plan. "It's a long story," the Spurs manager said. "He couldn't fly out to have it done because he couldn't find his passport. He'll have to have the op next week now."

quite a short story really

There's a nice long story on F365 about wheeling and dealing:

And so to deadline day. Surely Levy or Redknapp would pull a rabbit out the hat? Surely the club would realise that with Chelsea looking likely to sign Torres and Luiz, and with Man City looking to partner Dzeko and Tevez, a fillip was needed for the fans? No. Not one bit of it. Instead we had Harry offering his opinions on various talents, head hanging out a car window like a teenage father at a McDonald's Drive Thru:

"Giuseppe Rossi...good player. Diego Forlan...great lad. Jason Lee...super boy. Quarter Pounder... triffic lad."

Wait, are there people out there who actually want 'Arry to start getting into a panic buying mood? I don't understand most football fans.

every window should have a special one-day extension which only he can use

Advocate General's opinion favours pub showing greek satellite TV instead of expensive Sky package - been mentioned on here a couple of times, this is the last stage before the final court decision. The court usually agrees with the AG but not always. I don't really see how it wouldn't here.

YES! FUCK YOU MURDOCH!

Think this just means that Sky will get their next rights deal for even less, as exclusivity will be harder to claim.

Also the next step towards match attendences reaching Serie A levels.

Breaking Sky's monopoly wd be good for customers only if you can create genuine competition. The FA don't want genuine competition except as far as bidding for the rights are concerned. Genuine competition wd be a choice of providers for the same match. When the EU last dipped its toe into this, we got ESPN showing different games. Rather than competition driving the price down, pubs in particular were forced to shell out for 2 subscriptions if they wanted to show all the available games. Obv given the decline in the pub sector, lots of landlords/breweries have felt compelled to offer everything or lose customers to another pub.

I'm all for anything that undermines Sky's hold on the English game, but so far attempts to introduce competition have actually made things worse.

Having skimmed the thing, it reads like a fairly comprehensive win with one loophole (in italics) and one very comprehensive defeat (in bold). Not quite sure how you reconcile the two. In summary:

- the case is about the selling and use of decoder cards
- if the seller authorises their use in one part of the EU it can't restrict them in another
- here the sale in Greece was part of a contract undertaking not to use them in pubs in Britain
- that contract inhibits trade in cards between Greece and Britain
- hence illegal because free movement of goods is fundamental to the functioning of the EU
- but it is possible to have certain restrictions on the use of the goods, e.g. showing artistic works in pubs, if the UK thinks fit to have such restrictions by law
- in any case, trying to carve up the EU-wide market in this way, i.e. country-by-country selling with prohibitions on use, is anticompetitive

nv otm but fuck murdoch

xp comprehensive defeat for those seeking to carve up rights by country, that is

feel like i can end any sentence with but fuck murdoch

Every pub in the country is going to do this from now on rather than pay extortionate Sky fees, right?

hopefully

Is this about showing games which Sky are showing for less money than Sky are charging, or is it about the additional bonus of also getting games that Sky/ESPN aren't showing in this country? There's a pub in my town which has a card which gets them every channel in the whole world, just about, and they sell stupidly expensive beer because they have an exciting product which few other pubs have in town, namely 3pm Saturday EPL games and/or Celtic/Rangers home games.

The less money one. Would like to own this card.

Yeah 3pm Saturday games is the big one. It's not going to hurt you too much if you're Chelsea or Arsenal or even Newcastle or Sunderland but it's another excuse for Wigan or Blackburn fans not to bother going to the game.

Is this about showing games which Sky are showing for less money than Sky are charging, or is it about the additional bonus of also getting games that Sky/ESPN aren't showing in this country?

i think the arguement is about the former, but the latter as you said is a nice bonus

This is where I reckon it could fall down. It's all very well saying "let us get the games for cheaper than Sky", but when a byproduct of that is to get the other games Sky aren't showing as well, then you're possibly straying into territory that outstrips Sky's monopoly of TV rights.

The 'showing 3pm sat games' thing seems like the biggest potential prob. by not doing it does keep attendances up, right?

Hoping this means tv money is less lucrative for epl games and the fucking bubble will burst.

The days of the £50mn player are numbered.

Would be sweet to be able to go to a pub you like to watch prem games on a sat at 3pm.

Esp. if it fucks Sky up

Or, would be nice if clubs now had to cut ticket prices a lot to compete with TV and you could go to a game on Saturday without shelling out a ton.

Not good if it drives clubs out of business.

But clubs are paying players too much anyway.

clubs won't go out of business. they really won't. look at fucking pompy, who by all rights should be no more.

they'll just adjust, eventually, whether they like it or not.

Funnily enough, when there was far less money sloshing around, clubs weren't going into administration every other week