Milk
Udderly delicious
Thought I would start a new thread although I have been discussing this in the "Villa going down thread" as I think it needs talking about (or perhaps not??) but here is the text from an article by Rod Liddle in the last Sunday Times:
North -South divide in football
"Bolton Wanderers last won a major tournament in 1958, two Nat Lofthouse goals sinking Manchester United to secure the FA Cup. This came at the end of the Trotters' most successful ever spell in English football, almost 30 years in the top flight.
The wonderful Lofthouse has been dead for almost five years, otherwise one might have expected him to still be leading the line-up for the rather less gilded Wanderers side of today. After all, their two star centre-forwards have a combined age of 71. And a combined total of three goals between them all season.
Whatever the problems at the Macron stadium this year (and last, come to that), I suspect that Shola Ameobi (34) and the, uh, talismanic Emile Heskey (37) are not the answer. They are not entirely the cause of the problems either, of course - or at least only partly, and even then indirectly.
Bolton sit bottom of the table having won just twice all season. They have debts of £172.9m and have recently appointed the insolvency expert Trevor Birch to the position of temporary chairman. The regular chairman, Phil Gartside, is seriously ill and stood down before Christmas. The owner, the Isle of Man based businessman Eddie Davies, who comes from Bolton, has said he can no longer bail the club out; he is said to be worth about £60m, or a third of the club's debts.
So go figure. It looks very much like Bolton Wanderers are this season's Blackpool, or maybe this season's Wigan Athletic; doomed as a consequence of striving too desperately to regain their place in the top division. Unable to find new investors with the requisite very deep pockets.
Why would you buy Bolton Wanderers, or Wigan, or Blackpool, unless you came from the respective towns and were filled with a sense of misted romance? The only financial reason to buy a club is to be in the top tier and stay there. That's when the real money rolls in. But do any of these aforementioned clubs have the potential any more to be top-flight contenders? Sadly, I don't think so.
The club has admitted to paying high wages for too long, in the hope that this would be rewarded by promotion. How many similarly-sized clubs have made the same mistake? Twenty, thirty? That's where old-timers Shola and Emile cop some of the indirect blame because I don't suppose they're on a pittance even now.
The financial rewards of Premier League football are so vast, so utterly out of context, that owners - spurred on by the fans, you have to say - will risk bankruptcy in order to get there. The statistics would suggest only a few will get there.
But there's another reason behind Bolton's plunge, something more systemic and depressing. The northwest of England was where our domestic game - and, thus,the word's domestic game - began. This is why there is such a profusion of clubs in a comparitively tiny area, from Merseyside in the west to the cotton-mill towns of Burnley and, across the border, Huddersfield, in the east. From Macclesfield in the south to Fleetwood in the north.
As the Football League noted several years ago, altogether too many clubs in this changed environment: some would have to go bust. That prediction was unnecessarily pessimistic: the smallest clubs have survived by not spending too much, by cutting their cloth appropriately. It is the middle-ranking clubs of the northwest who have felt the pinch.
Bolton's last win came against another one of these beleaguered entities - Blackburn Rovers, also struggling at the wrong end of the table. Bolton's average attendance is about 15,000, Blackburn's a thousand or so less. Not enough - by a good 10,000 or so - to sustain a team in the top flight for long. Not enough, really, to get out of the Championship. And this is the real problem for all of them. We are less culturally indebted to our home towns. We are much more mobile than in the days when Lofthouse was banging them in. And we have satellite TV.
Why support Bolton when you could support Manchester United or Manchester City? Why support Tranmere or Blackpool or Wigan when you could support Liverpool or Everton? The old ties no longer bind. If you are a potential investor prepared to dig deep for a while, is there any club in that region you'd gauge as having the potential for long-term top-flight football? The nearest, I reckon, is Leeds United, a county away. The demographics of football have changed markedly. The balance of power is shifting inexorably to the south, where the money is and where there are new conurbations of comparitively affluent people who would quite like to see Premier League football on their doorsteps.
Look at the attendances at Brighton and Reading. Many times what they were when both were small-time third or fourth-tier contenders. Bournemouth - now a vast and affluent conurbation - will one day be attracting 30,000 plus to games. It is a reflection of the general, horrible, disparity of income between north and south. I wish it were not so, with much the same forlorn desperation as Bolton's manager, Neil Lennon, might wish that Emile Heskey scores a goal or two."
North -South divide in football
"Bolton Wanderers last won a major tournament in 1958, two Nat Lofthouse goals sinking Manchester United to secure the FA Cup. This came at the end of the Trotters' most successful ever spell in English football, almost 30 years in the top flight.
The wonderful Lofthouse has been dead for almost five years, otherwise one might have expected him to still be leading the line-up for the rather less gilded Wanderers side of today. After all, their two star centre-forwards have a combined age of 71. And a combined total of three goals between them all season.
Whatever the problems at the Macron stadium this year (and last, come to that), I suspect that Shola Ameobi (34) and the, uh, talismanic Emile Heskey (37) are not the answer. They are not entirely the cause of the problems either, of course - or at least only partly, and even then indirectly.
Bolton sit bottom of the table having won just twice all season. They have debts of £172.9m and have recently appointed the insolvency expert Trevor Birch to the position of temporary chairman. The regular chairman, Phil Gartside, is seriously ill and stood down before Christmas. The owner, the Isle of Man based businessman Eddie Davies, who comes from Bolton, has said he can no longer bail the club out; he is said to be worth about £60m, or a third of the club's debts.
So go figure. It looks very much like Bolton Wanderers are this season's Blackpool, or maybe this season's Wigan Athletic; doomed as a consequence of striving too desperately to regain their place in the top division. Unable to find new investors with the requisite very deep pockets.
Why would you buy Bolton Wanderers, or Wigan, or Blackpool, unless you came from the respective towns and were filled with a sense of misted romance? The only financial reason to buy a club is to be in the top tier and stay there. That's when the real money rolls in. But do any of these aforementioned clubs have the potential any more to be top-flight contenders? Sadly, I don't think so.
The club has admitted to paying high wages for too long, in the hope that this would be rewarded by promotion. How many similarly-sized clubs have made the same mistake? Twenty, thirty? That's where old-timers Shola and Emile cop some of the indirect blame because I don't suppose they're on a pittance even now.
The financial rewards of Premier League football are so vast, so utterly out of context, that owners - spurred on by the fans, you have to say - will risk bankruptcy in order to get there. The statistics would suggest only a few will get there.
But there's another reason behind Bolton's plunge, something more systemic and depressing. The northwest of England was where our domestic game - and, thus,the word's domestic game - began. This is why there is such a profusion of clubs in a comparitively tiny area, from Merseyside in the west to the cotton-mill towns of Burnley and, across the border, Huddersfield, in the east. From Macclesfield in the south to Fleetwood in the north.
As the Football League noted several years ago, altogether too many clubs in this changed environment: some would have to go bust. That prediction was unnecessarily pessimistic: the smallest clubs have survived by not spending too much, by cutting their cloth appropriately. It is the middle-ranking clubs of the northwest who have felt the pinch.
Bolton's last win came against another one of these beleaguered entities - Blackburn Rovers, also struggling at the wrong end of the table. Bolton's average attendance is about 15,000, Blackburn's a thousand or so less. Not enough - by a good 10,000 or so - to sustain a team in the top flight for long. Not enough, really, to get out of the Championship. And this is the real problem for all of them. We are less culturally indebted to our home towns. We are much more mobile than in the days when Lofthouse was banging them in. And we have satellite TV.
Why support Bolton when you could support Manchester United or Manchester City? Why support Tranmere or Blackpool or Wigan when you could support Liverpool or Everton? The old ties no longer bind. If you are a potential investor prepared to dig deep for a while, is there any club in that region you'd gauge as having the potential for long-term top-flight football? The nearest, I reckon, is Leeds United, a county away. The demographics of football have changed markedly. The balance of power is shifting inexorably to the south, where the money is and where there are new conurbations of comparitively affluent people who would quite like to see Premier League football on their doorsteps.
Look at the attendances at Brighton and Reading. Many times what they were when both were small-time third or fourth-tier contenders. Bournemouth - now a vast and affluent conurbation - will one day be attracting 30,000 plus to games. It is a reflection of the general, horrible, disparity of income between north and south. I wish it were not so, with much the same forlorn desperation as Bolton's manager, Neil Lennon, might wish that Emile Heskey scores a goal or two."
