FA Cup Final

prj45

Loads of stoke fans round my way in west london this morning. I initially wondered why there were loads of Brentford fans wandering around so early in the morning with northern accents which shows how much I know about football.

Aguila

CTID!!!

BelgianBeerGeek

Supported Stoke (did I mention I'm a Vale fan? ). Well sone Citeh, good game. Nice to see that according the unbiased BBC that was the second most important game today! At least the City fans are going back up the M6 on coaches where the United fans are heading to the airport to catch the flight to Dublin or Karachi or whereever!

shouldbeinbed

more noise at eastlands when I knocked off last night than when they've won at home.

and at the other end of the spectrum, my Blyth Spartans have lost a superb player because contracts don't pay over the summer and the lad needs an income so is off playing in Iceland to mke ends meet. there'll be a few others out the door too for the same reasons or because they've had to move for work or take on extra shifts to survive. A few years ago the club was minutes from oblivion for the sake of £60,000. We struggle and work miracles every single season to stay where we are, rebuilding repeatedly to stay within our means and seeing our best players headhunted for the sake of a grand signing on fee and £50 a match more. Promotion and relegation on merit is a joke nowadays as they're always one or two clubs that go bust. Ilkeston went belly up from BSN mid season and that was gutting for the likes of Blyth cos it lost a home games revenue. Stafford and Redditch have gone down, both utterly skint and struggling day to day, Stafford play within easy reach of Stoke. Redditch have had a playing budget of zero this season & players playing for expenses and kudos ofbeing nearly in the league. That would be the reality of these fiscal rules just on a larger scale. The Stokes the Boltons & the Blackburns would be the cream of football if these rules came in as the lunatic overspending of Man C, Chelsea, Man U, Liverpool etc would see them bankrupted out of existence overnight or losing every single player who would not put up with £400 a game and a discount half time pie, thats why they'll never come in, the clubs are as greedy and avaricious as the players are accused of being and will just threaten take the beat and ball home again


another day another rant. well done City. just remember the party you throw to celebrate this win will be more than the operatiing budget for half a dozen or more non league teams combined for an entire year.

EKE_38BPM

I think under tighter fiscal rules the mighty Arsenal would be the cream of the crop.

Did you see The Money Programme special last week with Lord Sugar ranting (rightly) about the state of the game and proposing new fiscal rules which would increase the trickle down of the money in the game from the Prem down to the lower leagues and would generally be good for English football. Well worth a watch.