Craigy_f – 1. Many see the CL in the last few years as a tale of PL dominance. It's hardly that in the UEFA Cup. How to you explain the difference in the two comps for PL teams (or other leagues) in the last three odd years.
2. Do you like the playoffs?
3. The last noise the Liverpool Supporters Who Want To Buy Liverpool made was about having the clout to actually have a dialogue with Hillette and Gicks. Apparently they wanted to talk ' intentions'. Will this happen?
4. Will Ince be given a bigger club or stick with much moved Wimbledon?
5. Tevez's stock must have gone up with that late goal at Blackburn?
6. Gimme your top five footballing flops this weekend, please.
7. What; off what goes on on the pitch; gets your goat when watching football.
8. Who will finish fifth? (In the PL, Serie A and La Liga)
9. Scottish Managers seem to do well darn sarf, why do you think that is?

Bobby –1. Many would seem to have a very poor grasp of what constitutes dominance. One win this decade hardly represents dominance.

2. Yes.

3. Until they have money in the bank they are trying to bluff their way in the door. There is a large chasm between fans expressing a willingness to put money up and actually writing the cheque. There again 100,000 of them could borrow the money from the bank which is no more ridiculous than what Hicks and Gillett pulled off. (Couldn't resist the notion that the ESPN commentator missed a golden opportunity at the end of the game today when the cameras panned over to Hicks. The comments was something like "owner Tom Hicks must now take his Liverpool team to Stamford Bridge next week..." Should it not have been "owner Tom Hicks must now take his half of the Liverpool team to Stamford Bridge next week..."

4. There are always teams on the lookout for a savior so I cannot see Ince staying with MK Dons much longer. He could take a shorter route to the Championship I am sure.

5. Three late equalizers doesn’t hurt but I think that after what he showed for WHU late last season there are not too many people surprised.

6. You get 1 and 1 a – Clyde losing to Hamilton and Queen of the South beating Dundee.

7. What?

8. Villa, Milan, Racing Santander.

9. If I knew sarf meant then I might be able to answer.

Gorn – 1. Your opinion on whether Fake Ronaldo's PK technique is caution-worthy/unsporting? Seems to me that it's not much, if at all, different than if he just took a shorter run-up. Is there another line of thinking?
2. What sources do you use to do yer research (ie: top away goal scorer in BPL in 07-08, etc.)? Any links appreciated!
3. By how many goals will LFC beat Chelsea in both legs of the CL semi?
4. There appears to be a few quality strikers available this summer (Berbatov, Huntelaar, Villa, Henry, Crouch & hell even Ronaldinho). Do you think this will create a bit of a market correction in transfer prices? Or will this be the priciest market in years? I know you don't like to speculate on things like specific transfers, just wondering yer general feeling on what you anticipate happening, especially w/so many top teams rumoured to be changing managers....
5. Do you think MLS needs a marquee team or 3 to stimulate rivalries/dynasties like the BPL has? Not advocating a class system exactly, but maybe more along the lines of brand development & recognition. Beckham helps, but if his team is pants, it doesn't help MLS. Further, MLS seems not yet able to simply throw $ at players to solve the problem like NASL did.

Maybe MLS would be served by having more than one team in a big city like NY to create a derby. Thoughts?

6. Dis/agree that there are at most 3 Canadian cities than can support an MLS team?

Bobby – 1. Nothing wrong with it whatsoever.

2. I hunt through stats sites. There is not one that has everything and in some cases the information doesn’t seem to exist. Most of the time it is a case of getting raw information and adding things up. I don’t think I use any sites that I or others haven’t referenced before; BBC, Fox, Telegraph, Soccerbot (probably my favourite), soccerbase.com, premiersoccerstats, RSSSF, channel 4 are the normal haunts. I also buy the European Book of Football each year which contains a statistical recap of every league in Europe plus international games.

3. Leading the witness – can’t have that. And do you now wish to rephrase the question after today?

4. Prices aren’t necessarily dependent on supply but are more influenced by money in the system. In the last few years that has been Premier League money and there is no indication that the money will dry up. I would also suggest that managers are not looking for strikers per se they are looking for specific types of strikers depending on their needs.

Berbatov is going to give you imagination, silky skills, and the ability to lead the line. Crouch is going to provide you with a lethal five yard pass back towards his own goal and ….come to think of it how many goals has your list of quality strikers actually scored this season?

Huntelaar 34 goals – we know from experience that goals in the Dutch league do not necessarily translate into goals in bigger leagues and he his coming up on 25 years old and nobody has made a real move for him yet. Wonder why? Berbatov 15 goals but also offers more. After that there have not been many goals from the others.

 5. Use the words “brand development” and you are not off to a very good start. Rivalries do not come from plunking a team or two down in the same city. They come from years of games, incidents and shared history.

Rivalries cannot be manufactured and it is not just about location. After all if your theory was right we would be watching the Greater London League every week. One more thing – the NASL did not solve any problems by throwing money at them; they just caused more problems.

6. Vancouver I have no doubt. Montreal is a strange market and I don’t know enough about it. The others - not a hope of being considered let alone being given a chance. It is after all an US league.


Ursusarctos - "Should the Moscow [CL] final turn out to be an all-English affair this season, there will be plenty of talk about the Premier League being the best in the world. It isn't. Torres is right [that La Liga is tougher than the Premier League because matches are more competitive all the way down the league, and that English football is really all about the top four.]" Yes. And it is too bad.

Do you agree with Wilson's (and Torres') analysis? How would you rate Serie A? Does it resemble the PL, in terms of the quality being consistently concentrated among the top (6 or so?) teams, or is it more similar to Spain? Leagues appear to tend to develop a quasi-permanent group of "haves", with the quality dropping off rapidly after-- Scotland's Old Firm and Portugal's Big Three are other examples.

Which major leagues would you consider to have the most turnover amongst the top group of teams, and the most competitive depth, over time (recent decades)-- and which the least? What factors might be responsible for differences between leagues? Or does the competitive depth of leagues go in cycles, with England at the lower end of the scale and Spain at the higher at this point in time (and Scotland doing its own thing)?

If so, will increasing financial rewards, such as CL prize money, tend to fix "elite" teams in place, or are there contrary factors that might help to promote intra-league competitiveness?

Bobby – I don’t care one way or another. You may as well argue about the greatest ever heavyweight boxer. At the end of the day it is what excites and engages you – it has nothing to do with a subjective definition of best.

(I notice another MLS is #### discussion has broken out. We have been around this one before but someone has yet to tell me what constitutes great football that they will watch and bad football that they won’t. Fans relate through building allegiances and they have no idea whether or not they will enjoy a game or will want to throw up when they pay their money or sit down in front of a TV. There is no such thing as all games in X league good; all games in Y league bad. When fans dismiss a league as being rubbish what they mean is they don’t relate to it. It has nothing to do with the standard of play even though they make it out to be.)

In terms of parity England use to be the exception in that there were a number of clubs that had a real chance of picking up silverware every season. The advent of the Premiership killed that extended era and the Premiership took on the same character as Europe’s other main leagues.

Take a look at the teams who have won leagues and cups in each country – it will closely follow the 80/20 rule. Eighty per cent of the silverware will have been won by 20% of the teams. The difference between success and failure long tern in soccer is the same as in business – the access to capital.

No guarantee of success but if you don’t have access to money through a large fan base (which normally means a team from a large city) you cannot compete in the long term. It works the same for leagues – that is why countries with large populations generally have better teams and more of them.

There are a couple of exceptions but they are exceptions, not the rule. I haven’t done the research but my guess is that the French league has probably enjoyed the broadest range of winning sides until Lyon started their domination.

The Champions League is installing or in some cases ingraining what could become a perpetual cycle of relative success for a relatively small number of clubs. Win their league and make it to the CL group stage generates money that their domestic rivals do not have access to; spend the money to improve the squad and qualify for Europe again etc etc.

Rosenborg had it down to an art for over a decade. Platini’s initiative to extend places in the group stage to more countries is in theory good and noble but it may also lead to a greater distortion at the domestic level.

MasMaz - I assume that tonight you will give us your opinion about Rooney being given free reign to do whatever he wants. If not I'd like to hear it.

Bobby – I can’t say that I have noticed any difference in the way that Ferguson is playing Rooney. He has been granted a lot of freedom all season from what I can see.

However, if you are trying to make some ridiculous comparison with Mascherano’s sending off against United then you will have to make a better case. If you can show me an example of Rooney running 40 yards to get in the referee’s face when he has already been given a yellow card and had no involvement in the incident then you might have a case – oh and your teammate has just been carded for yapping at the referee. Otherwise you might want to wait until you have a more credible comparison.

Neophyte - Did you see the Toronto FC/ Real Salt Lake match? It looked like the match ended with only one minute of injury time instead of the three minutes posted by the 4th official. Home cooking or poor clock management and communication from the center to the 4th official?

Bobby – You hit a sore spot. I opted to watch the Blackburn game, tape TFC, go out for the first kick about of the new season and then come home and watch three MLS games. Tape malfunction on the TFC game so the only part I saw was when I switched over at half time in the Blackburn match. I did catch the other two MLS games though.

Maybe the 4th official did as good a job programming his board as I did programming my tape machine!

Aldoray - Football clubs have a Manager and Assistant Manager and coaches. What are the roles each of them play? Does the manager give the overall plan and then the assistant and the coaches carry it out or is the manager always hands on with the squad and everybody else is just peripheral. Or is it different for every club.

Bobby – Unfortunately the answer is the old standby – it depends. Some mangers are out there with the squad every day, some occasionally and others hardly at all. I remember reading a feature on Martin O’Neill during his Celtic days and his view was that a manager can maximize his impact if he limits his contact with the players.

His theory was that with a lot of daily contact the messages that the manager wants to communicate are blunted and the motivational effect is dampened. I can only assume he still feels the same way.

There is a certain irony because that is a view from many years ago. Prior to Busby, Shankly, Stein etc. popularizing the idea of the “Tracksuit Manager” the preparation was left to a coach (rarely coaches!) and the manager would come in on game days to give the team talk. Otherwise he dealt with other things during the week.

JayAlves - Arsenal fans can sleep easy knowing Usmanov /=/ Abramovich from a money standpoint. Last time I checked Usmanov was worth 1/3 or 1/4 of Abramovich and considering how Arsenals profits are going might become an unrealistic team for him to buy assuming the board keep entering no sale agreements.

They floated this theory on WSD not long ago but they were off the mark on one point. They said maybe the board is being cheap on purpose to keep growing the club financially so they can’t be taken over. Thing is though the board on several occasions have dropped the huge money figures that Wenger has if he wants so you could hardly accuse them of being cheap.

Bobby – I don’t think that theory stands up. First off being debt free and enjoying the relative luxury of a fully paid for stadium did not save Manchester United from a highly leverage buy out from the Glazers. The same would hold true for an Arsenal club that is in a poorer position than United were because it still carries a huge stadium debt.

A case could be made that by improving the net financial position (not spending money) Arsenal are actually making the club a more desirable takeover target rather than turning the opportunists off. Companies that enjoy great balance sheets and hoard gobs of cash are often bigger and better targets for raiders than companies with huge debts.

Think about it from a lenders point of view and what would give you greater security –  your money to pay off someone else’s debt or go towards buying cash generating assets with a pile of cash already sitting there?