The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Adam Bushby and Rob MacDonald discuss Manchester City’s proposed new youth facility
Manchester City’s application for a new youth academy and training facility, covering 80 acres and set to cost £100 million, will be considered by the city council on December 22. It is perhaps the most audacious of the various methods by which clubs have sought to emulate Barcelona’s La Masia academy. While the latter has evolved – it moved to a new location on June 30 as Masia-Centre de Formació Oriol Tort – and facilities all over the world have been refurbished and updated piecemeal, City are the only club attempting to drop an entire state-of-the-art complex on top of an already successful academy.
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Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 - The Archive
A pub landlady’s legal victory over the Premier League could be good news for all concerned, but we shouldn’t worry too much about negative consequences for Sky, claims David Harrison
Once the knee-jerk media response to the recent ruling on EU televised football rights died down, we were left with a commodity notably lacking during the broadcasts in question – silence. Predictably lazy images – grinning pub landlady pulls celebratory pints in Southsea boozer – were duly filed below celebratory headlines proclaiming Karen Murphy’s “victory” in the European Court of Justice. Well, possibly.
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Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 - The Archive
According to James de Mellow, televising 3pm kick-offs could rob fans of the particular excitement of Saturday afternoon
One of British football’s idiosyncrasies is that at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon, when the majority of weekend’s games are being played, there is no live football on television. The way supporters who are not at their team’s game can follow along has evolved with technology during the past 20 years or so. But live Saturday afternoon football being beamed into living rooms could change all that for good.
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Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 - The Archive
Steve Davies says that dividing TV deals unequally would make football less competitive but it could also be a legal minefield
Ian Ayre, the managing director of Liverpool, quickly qualified his reported assertion that his club should sell its own overseas TV rights and keep the income. He now says he meant that they should be sold collectively but the income divided on the basis of a team’s popularity, in terms of the number of times their games are featured. Clearly he was under pressure to modify his stance, given that even the other clubs who could have benefited from the move were against it. When Ayre heard Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck condemning his plan he must have realised he was on his own.
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Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 - The Archive
While the Olympic Stadium saga continues, Mark Segal asks whether a move to Stratford really is in the best interests of West Ham
When West Ham first announced their intention to move into the Olympic Stadium after London 2012, the response from fans was at best lukewarm. After it was made clear that the new 60,000-seat ground will include a running track, scepticism grew among fans who were still not entirely convinced that their team needed to move away from Upton Park.
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Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 - The Archive