QPR 1 Leicester 2

With 6000 extra squeezing into Loftus Road, we probably shouldn't take personal responsibility for bokking the Rs, tempting as it is. But Rangers were, as Jim Magilton admitted after the game, second best in this one and Leicester deserved to win. If you're interested in the game you've probably seen the goals anyway. I wasn't too impressed by the players I hadn't seen before, although Faurlin in particular probably just had an off-night. Whatever, Magilton added that "As much as we didn't get carried away by our recent fine form, I'm not going to go over the top about one loss." which is fair enough as well ; I think both teams should be around the play-off zone in the final shake-up. I quite enjoyed myself, but as much for the company as the game so I'll just stick to as and when I feel like it going forward. Don't hold your breath :-)

Debt And More Debt

A quick update to The League Table Of Debt ; you would have thought that having found their way into the Premiership with a debt of just £1m, Hull City might at least be reasonably safe - but apparently not. Now, as they say in the article, those numbers apply to the point just after Hull were promoted, so the extra Premiership income should see them through, you would think, if they haven't gone nuts on wages. It makes you wonder though, when Hull City, with a new stadium and good attendances, bink the Premiership out of nowhere, stay up and they're still apparently under threat, after basically finding the "pot of gold" - well, it's no wonder what the writer says at the end about most clubs needing a sugar daddy. Premiership (and wannabe Premiership) football appears to be completely unsustainable on its own merits at the moment.

Given that, I might as well pop along to QPR and see if they really are playing their best football since 1995 at the very least, before they hit the skids as well, and I should be at the Palace game next week (if not Leicester on Friday).

Can Daniel Negreanu Put A Penalty Past Pepe Reina ?

WTF you say, can Superman outrun The Flash ? But there is some indication that this is a challenge that might actually be thrown down. I say some indication because we're working off a piece in The Sun (I know) :

Sheringham Is Feeling Flush

Incidentally the poker content of this piece is LOL even by The Sun's standards. However, this is the bit that sparked interest on 2+2 :

"But Canadian Daniel [Negreanu] has the chance to win some extra cash over a bet with another footballer - Liverpool goalkeeper JOSE REINA. Jose met Daniel at a tournament and reckons Daniel won't score past him in five attempts - and there's £12,000 riding on it."

Here's the 2+2 thread. Oddly, Negreanu chips in to comment on his football background but gives no indication whatsoever if the bet is genuine and, if so, when it might happen. This leads me to suspect shenanigans and severly doubt whether anything will happen. Nonetheless, if it does, I have booked $1000 with 2+2er BKIce, with me saying no way, Negreanu will not score in 5 pens and him taking 1/5 or more. It seems self-evident to me that I have the best of this, not least because Negreanu is a wet and a weed. Someone who's more than 9 stone dripping wet might have a better shot. I have to say though, it's a good bet - it's fun to see how many people (myself included) are so confident even though they're taking opposite sides.

Update : Sadly, especially for those of us hoping to make the easiest $1000 in earth history, this is not going to happen. Negreanu has again posted in the thread without giving any indication of if and when it will actually take place. My read of his thought process is "Yay ! 8 pages of people talking about me playing football ! Who says I'm gay ?". Everyone Daniel. Everyone.

Crisis At QPR - The BBC Steps In

Report - F1 Scandal Hits QPR

A typically in-depth report from the BBC. The one expert opinion that the reporter seeks is ... a bloke in a flower shop. Nice bloke I'm sure, but what does he know ? Nothing. Wouldn't it be better journalism for the BBC to find someone who actually does know what would happen in the event that the Football League deem Briatore to be "unfit" to own the club while he actually owns it, instead of during the process of buying it ? Because that would be a useful thing to know, and someone in football must know it, if leagues don't make stuff up as they go along (hang on ...).

I don't know shit about what would happen. I'm expecting a BBC team to knock on my door at any minute. Why don't we just wait and see. In the meantime I will actually be at the game on Saturday as the Camel is in town for the donkaments (what a great sentence that must be to someone who doesn't know poker). If Rangers win, great, if they don't then meh. That mindset's working really well for me so far this season.

Update : Camel bows out with camel flu and I have to be in Chelmsford this evening so it was too awkward to go on my own. 5-2 thriller. FOL.

Further Update (7/10) : Briatore set to discover QPR fate

"We have a board meeting and have at least a couple of fit-and-proper person issues which we will address," said Football League chairman Lord Mawhinney.
"They are on the agenda. I would like to come out of the board meeting with settled policies in general terms which we can apply to future cases that need to be addressed. "

So in other words they are making it up as they go along. Marv.

Hmmm. They Do Have A Point.

Mitchell and Webb on Football

What, already ?

Yet again, the football league season lurches over the horizon just when we'd got used to seeing the back of it. It does seem ridiculously early but what can you do. I haven't bought a season ticket this year ; I have just been texted by QPR to let me know that season tickets are still available. Yes, I bet they are. Nonetheless, I do believe that Rangers could have a very good season. Obviously this optimism comes to all of us (well most of us) every August, but one thing I'm sure of is that the vast majority of the "Championship previews" I've read were clearly composed in about half an hour before lunch.

When the hack in question reaches QPR in the list he comes up with meddling owners ... continual manager changes ... sold top scorer ... doom ! Who's next, Reading. While there's no denying those three facts, I'm still holding out some hope that the people running the club aren't complete fucking idiots. There's that optimism again. Surely at some point the penny will drop that they have to give someone a chance to do the job. Jim Magilton wasn't everyone's dream choice but as a slightly better informed local paper said in their preview, given that most of us expected that only a complete no-hoper would actually take the job it could have been a lot worse.

As for the squad, at face value it looks like we've lost Camp and Blackstock and only brought in an "unknown" midfielder and striker. Ooh, unknown to the guy who spends 10 minutes every week writing the first thing that comes into his head about the Championship in the Daily Mail ! Wow, they must suck ! The reality is that since Vine and Agyemang arrived 18 months ago, they have been head and shoulders above all the others as our best strike pair. Last season with injuries they played one game together, the last one. We also missed Rowlands and Buzsaky for a large chunk of the season. Now those four are added in, Angelo Balanta has played every game in pre-season and don't forget Wayne Routledge. The Loftus Road pitch, probably the worst in the division, has been relaid, and there's no change to the defence which was the 5th best anyway last season.

Follow the money. Betfair has us around 7th, but that's below Newcastle and Middlesboro who are always going to attract money but I don't fancy either. At all. Pre-season shme-season you might say, but it's damn hard to sweep a result like Leyton Orient 6 Newcastle 1 under the carpet even if it's a frigging testimonial. I make West Brom clear favourites, Sheffield United probably second, then there's a bunch of teams with not much between them and I reckon Rangers could be right in there. Of course, they could also sack Magilton in October for losing two games in a row and go right back to square one, I'm not saying that's impossible :-).

All of which kind of overstates how much I'm investing emotionally this year - which is as little as possible. I'll go when I feel like it. I'm the first to admit that I'm far more likely to go if they're winning games and there's a bit of feel-good around the place. I'm not even going to justify that. Whatever. As usual, it's just the shoddy journalism that annoys me. I'm pretty sure that for any club outside the big four, definitely any outside the Premiership, any fan with half a brain knows more about his club than the people who write blanket coverage in the national press. So my advice would be stick to the blogs if you want to know what's actually happening, and I'll chip in as and when I go to games.

Edit : Also lol at Darren Bent bitching on Twitter and then being "disappointed at how it came out". Does he fully understand how Twitter works do you think ?

The League Table Of Debt

Obviously I knew that Premier League clubs have a lot of debt, but here it is in black and white, and I find it just incredible :

Premier League clubs boast £3.1bn of debt

All the information is there, I'm just collating it here to draw attention to the most interesting bits. First of all, here's the league table of debt


Club Debt/£m
Chelsea 701
Man Utd 699
Arsenal 416
Liverpool 280
Fulham 197
Man City 147
Newcastle 106
Middlesboro 93
Aston Villa 73
Sunderland 70
Wigan 66
Tottenham 65
Portsmouth 58
Bolton 52
Everton 39
West Ham 36
Blackburn 17
West Brom 9
Stoke 2
Hull 1

All these figures were as of the most recent filed accounts, most of which were in summer 2008. No doubt the promoted clubs at the bottom will have different figures as of this summer, although hopefully (for their sake) not much bigger debt !

Greatest "overachievers" in terms of league position vs "debt position" were Everton (+10), not Stoke as I would have assumed, who were joint second with West Ham on +7. "Overachievers" Fulham finished 7th but have the 5th biggest debt in the league, so there goes that one. Not surprisingly, Newcastle and Middlesboro prop this one up on -11.

If you make a "wages" table it looks remarkably like what you would come up with if you subjectively compiled a "biggest club" table. Fulham come out of this much better, with the 14th biggest wage bill for +7, but Newcastle are the real dogs with the 5th biggest wage bill for -13.

OK, you say, so these clubs have debts. But at least money's coming in, right ? Well, you would think. 7 clubs made a profit (we have to count Everton's £26 thousand profit technically). In only two cases did that profit amount to more than 10% of the club's debt : Blackburn (£3m cf. £17m) and West Brom (£11m cf. £9m). Even also-rans like Bolton, Wigan and Middlesboro are losing £10m a year. Manchester United lost £45m but I assume that includes interest payments of £69m. Chelsea lost £85m even though they pay no interest at all.

So what do we conclude ? Well football does seem to be something of a special case. If a business with figures like Newcastle United's [1] (or half the other clubs) was up for sale no one would go anywhere near it. With a few exceptions [2], established Premiership clubs are entirely dependent on their backers to avoid complete collapse, never mind to compete. The healthiest position by far appears to be West Brom's, which kind of makes sense ; you can disparage the "yo-yo" clubs if you like but the way it's set up if you get promoted, don't go mad on wages, accept relegation, pick up parachute payments and repeat, it seems to be just about the only way of actually making money. And it's not bad for fans either, one season of crushing and scoring lots of goals, one of watching top players rip you to bits.

Anyway, this was all an eye-opener to me. I've generally assumed that the top four were so far ahead because of their Champions League income. However, it's really because of the huge levels of debt they have incurred and continue to incur [3] just to keep up with each other. House of Cards anyone ?

[1] To summarise, £106m debt, £75m wages, £34m loss last year.

[2] Blackburn and Everton seem to be reasonably well run but of course Blackburn only dragged themselves out of the bottom end of the second tier thanks to a huge private investment

[3] Arsenal are probably exempt from this as most of the (£416m) debt was to finance the new stadium and they did make £36m profit last year, But of course then their fans are up in arms because they don't spend enough !