Spurs definitely, 3 points against Stoke and we will have qualified for the CL with 4 games still to go providing goal differences don't change significantly. Man U have had a dreadful season by their own high standards, whether they qualify for the CL or not. Both ManU and Spurs minimum target was CL qualification at the beginning of the season, it looks like Spurs will easily achieve their minimum target, ManU might just scrape it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/36041626 Barca are struggling to score goals. Understandable with a front three of Suarez, Messi & Neymar. Not enough height - maybe they should sign Andy Carroll?
Not quite, unless Utd lose and West Ham don't win. They have a game in hand on us, so 18 points still available. Even Pool would still be able to overtake us, they can still get to 69 points if they win all their games. The big moment might have to wait until WBA, which would be good as I am going!
In a bad 24 hours for The Spammers, Boris and The LLDC have announced that they are no longer to appeal against the decision of the Information Commissioner to order disclosure of the terms of the Spammers 'lease', sorry, that should read 'gift', of The Olympic Stadium. A good day.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/36043808 Spurs and Chelsky only have to reveal how much they are being provisionally being charged for either of the MK Dons / Wembley leases for the nomad seasons, and that should be that on "state aid" .
Yep. The ref was SO 'bent' that he didn't give Barca a definite penalty in the last minute! I actually thought that that and not sending off Iniesta were the only things he got wrong.
Which doesn't even cover the cost of converting the White Elephant to be half empty on alternate weekends.
So. West Ham are renting a 60,000 seater stadium for less money per year than we paid f*cking Adebayor. Lovely.
Just reading the concession agreement for the former Olympic Stadium. Schedule 2 to the agreement sets out excluded categories of advertisements. Para 1(b) excludes "advertisements for any organisation whose principal business includes the sale of tobacco-related products or pornographic material" Hmmm.
Although, having done some research, the City move back in 2003 was equally as dodgy. The stadium was originally constructed for the Commonwealth Games at a cost of £112m. It's conversion to a football stadium costed a further £48m, of which only £20m was footed by City themselves. £22m was footed by the council (taxes) and the remaining £4m was covered by a national lottery grant. City currently pay just £3m rent PA on a 150 year lease. The moral of the story seems to be obvious: wait for a major national sporting event until you decide to move to a new stadium and you genuinely cannot go wrong.
You have to repeatedly refresh the link I gave (the BBC are updating the content on the fly as they read the docs) . The "performance" clauses are a joke too.
The payment is £1.25m a year when they get relegated. On the grounds they'll be getting £100m as a minimum parachute payment? That's what we pay for Fazio.
In fairness, Citeh did cough up close to 50% of the cost, at a time when their then financial/on-pitch power/success was far below what it is now. However, even their rent damns the LLDC further. They pay 0.5m MORE for a deal that was done a DECADE BEFORE the OS one.
In Manchester. You could buy the whole of that city for the value of the land that the Elephant sits on.
From The Standard: The LLDC is actively pursuing an agreement over naming rights for the stadium that it hopes will be in place by the start of the season. Any such deal will see the first £4m return directly to the corporation with a 50:50 split on further income. So, the Spammers will get half of the money (less the first layer of a paltry £4m) for an agreement they didn't negotiate in relation to a stadium they don't own. We're actually going to be paying them to occupy the stadium.****'s sake!
<BBC> The first £4m of any naming rights deal will go to the LLDC and Newham borough, with anything above that between the two bodies and West Ham. </BBC> This ties in with the "30% of that" claim that the Mayor of Newham made on the PR hurrah day the bid was granted. So Newham Council have effectively bid 40m of local taxpayers money on a "futures" that the Spanners get a naming rights deal of at least 133m + whatever is needed to cover what Newham could have got on market investments between the day the money was handed over to the day any naming rights money is paid up.
Up until the point that I made that comment he did look bent. He let Barca off on three red card decisions. Turns out that he was simply bottling all of the big calls. How was Suarez elbowing Godin in the eye a yellow, in your opinion? I don't see how the ref got that right.
To be fair to West Ham it's a good bit of business. Levy also wanted to relocate Spurs there under no doubt a similar agreement and geographically, surely the fairest decision would be West Ham ?
