http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/23006865 Not sure where I stand on this. 20 years ago, the FA decided to deregulate everything and let the TV companies do as they please with top tier football. The servant now rules the master. There's not a chance Sky/BT will "do the right thing" for England, they are only interested in viewing figures. From what PNP said you are due to play a qualifier in the Europa League on the Thursday so that makes a Saturday fixture unlikely. Also, when you consider Liverpool v United, it's unlikely Merseyside Police will want United in town on a Saturday, given that it's Sky's flagship game (for gloryhunters) they will want a kick off time to capture a wider audience. In my view its likely to be a Super Sunday with Liverpool v United at 1.30pm and Arsenal v Spurs at 4.00pm. For those that support Spurs AND England, what are your views on this? Would you be prepared to jeopardise England's chances of qualifying for the WC to help Spurs or vice versa?
They cannot put the onus on the clubs, the Premier League is to blame. I would be furious if the NLD is on Saturday after we've played our Europa qualifying game on Thursday and I would take a victory at the Emirates as my overwhelming priority. If that jeopardises England, then so be it.
Perhaps the FA and Mr Hodgson should've stuck their oar in before the fixtures had been finalised, as I'm sure many other interested parties did?
It makes no difference if Man utd are playing Hull or Liverpool in terms of the match being the weekend before an international fixture. The same is true of spurs and arsenal playing each other or Cardiff. Its fair enough to say the England need to get together for longer before matches but it's irrelevant who plays who. There are a lot of things wrong with the power the premier league and sky tv but in all honesty I think this issue is total bollocks
I always thought Hodgson and England was a car crash in the making. That was why I agreed with getting rid of Harry ... if he'd have stayed the Harry for England bandwagon was bound to come round again. Hodgson is just getting his excuses in early...seriously his complaint is mainly based around wanting the matches to be played on the saturday rather than the sunday...if england **** up qualifying is it really going to be because of 24 hours in these 2 fixtures?
Club football became more important than international football in England some considerable time ago. For one reason alone - money. Congested fixture lists and games being moved for TV mean that the international game will always suffer. But let's also be realistic. TV revenue drives football - and it is the club game which attracts the revenue. If the PL shunned the TV companies, the lost revenue would result in the club sides not being able to recruit top stars, the standard would drop, a handful of skilful English players would go abroad and the England team would be made up of even more "big lads and lads with a good engine" than it is now.
One solution is to make 3pm Saturday football available live, you can go to many places in the world and do just that...except England! In regard to viewing figures, I think its a strong argument they'd get more people watching their own teams between 3 n 5 on a Saturday, than the total of the neutral watchers on a Sunday. The debate there is whether it would harm attendance figures, personally I think not, you cannot beat being there on Saturday afternoon matchday, but clubs could at least give the rest of their fanbase half the experience so to speak, so I would welcome it. There's more Spurs supporters that can't get to games than can, so it has to be a moneyspinner imo, can't understand why they don't do it, they must know we scrabble around the internet watching it anyway.
Agree. Spurs, I think, would continue to sell out the ground each week, but others (like Wigan for example, might not, although they aren't a worry for a while) The tech and infrastructure is there for another option though. 1 - make 1 game "free" each week on tv, whether that be sky sports or elsewhere 2 - make all other pay-per-view for say £5. Enough of a reduction over tickets to tempt new viewers but not cheap enough to deter vast numbers from the stadia 3 - a proportion of the revenue for that game goes to the home team. This would offset any missing fans from the stadium. With the fan bases worldwide you might need some of sliding scale based on viewing figures to prevent man utd rolling in it. Or a proportion could go to away team too.
Didn't Italy's introduction of televising virtually every game result in their attendances going through the floor? Nobody wants to watch a game where the ground's half empty.
One or two rather bigoted views on here on this subject. Every manager, whether he is a club manager or an Intrnational manager, has the right to hope and expect he will be given the best opportunities possible to work with his players. There is a real possibility that this might not happen for Hodgson so I think he is right to have a whinge on this one.
Yes they did drop, but for a number of reasons to do with the corruption thing and all the other problems Serie A has faced over the years. For example, the year Juve were demoted, attendances boosted by their away support in Serie B were felt by the lower clubs in Serie A normally boosted by Juve's visit. http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2006/oct/25/europeanfootball.sport I'm not sure which season the 'live coverage' happened, do you?
