A couple of faintly depressing things this morning. Firstly a chap posting on Northstandchat, the Albion fans' most active forum, that he has four tickets for England's game with Hungary at Wembley which he bought months ago. He can not now attend, so is trying to sell them on at below face value. Initially £20 each for £35 face value tickets, now £15 each. No takers and a string of invective aimed at England players, the wounds from the World Cup clearly still raw. I hope the players and the FA (and the Premier League) don't ignore how strongly people feel about this as the new season gets under way. I suspect they'll have a fairly vocal reminder of people's feelings when the teams run out.
I'm not holding my breath though. The realities of Premier League thinking in particular where brought into sharp focus by an expert football commentator guest on Sky Sports News this morning. (Yes, I know, I know... That's the sort of telly I watch.) He was speaking specifically about the proposed Chinese take-over of Liverpool. (Don't even get me started on that. The club with possibly more sense of tradition and the old football values than any other is already in the wrong hands. Being sold on again to a different example of the same type of entity is another symptom of the worrying direction it's going.) But anyway - it's emerged than Kenny Huang may possibly be backed by the Chinese government. When asked 'Where do you see this going?' the commentator responded that he saw Premier League games being played in other continents in future.
Now my girlfriend would probably be delighted to read this, but the day that happens is the day football has forgotten its history, heritage and soul so completely that I give up on it. I don't say that lightly, but I mean it. It's bad enough that our clubs are being franchised already, moved from their home and their fan base to Milton Keynes for example, but the day the game itself is franchised is the day I want nothing further to do with it.
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