"Ha ha but be rude not to convey LCFC's sincere thanks for smashing United and giving us at least champions league qualifier play-offs next season"
PNP is right. If you can still finish 4th that place will be taken away from you if City and Pool win the cups and City don't finish top 4. I'll give anyone 1,000/1 against it, but it is possible.
A 2-0 victory over Sunderland further advanced the Foxes' hopes of winning the Premier League, but also clinched them a guaranteed place in Europe's elite club competition.
Nope, Europa league picks up a 5th spot like Sevilla did in Spain. If Liverpool win it won't affect the top 4. It did occur to me that Man City could win the champions league and finish outside the top 4 (which would be a repeat of what Chavski did to you) but if Man City were to finish outside the top 4 we then couldn't finish 4th as we are mathematically guaranteed to finish above Man U in 5th. The permiatations are complicated but whatever way you look at it we are guaranteed champions league and I don't think you lot will be far behind
Just to clarify, both CL and EL would potentially pick up an additional slot if they were won by a club that's not in one already. You can't win both and benefit from it, though. You lose a slot from the league if that happens. No idea why, but it seems rather unlikely anyway, though. We all know exactly who'll miss out if it ever comes up!
Says it all the best defence LLDC can come up with is that revealing the full document will cost the taxpayers millions. Because the White Elephant didn't cost the taxpayer millions, nor is putting up Wet Spam for 99 years of being unable to fill the stadium.
Next season is the big one for Leicester. They will have European football to deal with. They will certainly need to strengthen their squad extensively to have any chance of coping with the demands of multiple competitions. Much will depend on how many of their current squad they can keep, and the quality of what they add.
Saw BBC London news. The LLDC claim (competitive bidding against Wembley and Twickenham) is fallacy. Those places are the home of national football/rugby, and their owners do not primarily intend for 30 odd competitive matches to be played there annually. The Spanners reqts are not those of the RWC, NFL showpieces etc. All we need to know is if : - the deal is market (ie what are Wembley - a specific football stadium - intending to charge Spurs/Chelsky for their nomad seasons etc) - those politniks found to have cost the country money for their vainglorious hubris, are going to suffer severe financial/custodial punishment.
The entire affair reeks like a month old fish and like any stinking fish, the rot starts at the head. Seb Coe promised an athletics stadium as a legacy of the Olympics. Everyone hosting the games makes this promise knowing they'll never keep it. Only problem being Seb wants to be Head of the IAAF and he'll not get the gig unless we pay to keep the white elephant in the manner Seb needs it kept. So,Spurs can't buy the thing. Oh no, it has to be given to the Spammers for free because their owners can see that they'll make a fortune out of selling the site of the Lego towers for development and selling on the club to some Oil Baron. All it costs is a few million quid in political donations from the Spammers owners to the Tory party. They should all be strung up by their genitals, if only they wouldn't enjoy it.
What sort of 'punishment' could they possibly hope to implement though? The agreement was made with the full approval of the Assembly and Mayor's Office. Unless something was done that is revealed to have been illegal, I don't see how what or why West Ham can be punished for it. If anything, the Olympic Committee and L.A did more wrong as in their haste to shift an embarrassing white elephant standing in silent testimony against the true enemy of the taxpayer - the Olympic Games themselves held during times of austerity - that they simply cut as many corners as possible in their haste to get the deal done. As much as I loath them, the Porn brothers and Brady were only ever acting on the best interests of their club, and rightfully so. It is the local authority's responsibility to protect the taxpayer, not a poor man's Peter Stringfellow. I highly doubt anything illegal was done; Levy would've been all over it like a rash. Unfortunately, you cannot punish something that was unfair. If someone cuts you off on the road, there's nothing you can do about it unless it can be proven that they did so because they were under the influence. The OS deal stank of unfairness from day 1. Maybe there's more to it though...
The original award of the stadium to West Ham was ruled ultra vires. So, they re-drew the criteria to assess the outcome and wentthrough the 'sham' again. In common parlance that's called 'fixed'. It was always fixed in favour of an outcome that suited people other than those that should have been the priority - John Q Taxpayer. I doubt the people who made such arrangements had the authority to act in such a manner. If Levy went to war on this, do we think that Boris would have signed off on our stadium plus the minimal but welcome local funding? This reeks and there's illegality at the heart of the actions of the public bodies involved. The fact that they all are members of the same political party is not coincidence.
My understanding is that initially, the design plan was that the full 2012 stadium was temporary, and that after that there could would be a "core" legacy athletics stadium remaining, but it would have a fraction of the seating capacity of the Olympic config. I will not criticise the Spanners owners for correctly speculating that if the remaining stadium was to be the full config, then in athletics terms it was a white elephant and they might be the only option in town.
