Aberdeen v Burnley Official Match Thread

[lancyclaret]

I doubt lancyclaret will know who you are talking about there. In case not, Collum is a referee who has made some dodgy calls against us in a number of past games.

Yes, I can understand and sympathise. If we get certain refs in the PL, we can virtually guarantee we won't get a win.

[afc1903mad]

Yes, I can understand and sympathise. If we get certain refs in the PL, we can virtually guarantee we won't get a win.

Who would you say is the best ref you see?
I always thought Michael Oliver was pretty good.

[ragnarok]

Problem is I've been reading this kind of thing for years. It's not sustainable, there will be an implosion. Little evidence ever seems to be offered beyond gut feel and a sense that "it's all gone crazy".

I read an article in one of the papers a few years back (almost certainly The Times or Sunday Times) that challenged this view head on. I wish I'd kept it. The writer, an economist with a particular interest in the game and the TV companies argued that, contrary to the bloke down the boozer conventional wisdom that the amount of TV money washing around the English game could not be sustained, he was convinced it would continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

He gave elaborate reasons for this, but basically it boiled down to the extent to which the availability of a football league competition is a trigger for making people subscribe to TV providers world-wide. And as new markets opened up in China etc the product was only becoming more valuable. There was also a detailed discussion of why the English league was uniquely well-placed to be the league everyone bought into.

OK it's one guy's opinion and people can get this stuff wrong. But I couldn't help but be struck by the fact that I'd heard the "it can't last" opinion so many times, yet when someone who was qualified to actually took the trouble to examine the evidence intellligently he took exactly the opposite view. And sure enough the next time the TV deals were negotiated, and contrary to the views of the "it can't last" orthodoxy, the "unsustainable" level of money went up. Massively.

The TV companies don't give a **** if a couple of thousand Chelsea fans are nostalgic for the old days. What they care about is millions of Chinese subscribing for Sky.

Maybe the whole thing will collapse like a pack of cards as folk like to predict. I'm not holding my breath.

I agree. Much of this is just wishful thinking. Modern football follows the pareto distribution and principle to a tee. Look at the number of teams in the NFL relative to the population of the Unites States. European football could quite easily adopt a similar model - two leagues of 20 or three leagues of 18. I think this is likely to arise as a response to the financial dominance of the English game more than anything else as big European clubs are likely to put more pressure on UEFA as they are increasingly outspent by clubs like Burnley and Swansea.

The really depressing thought is that the Glasgow clubs would likely be Scotland's only representatives in and European league system so would become the de facto clubs for the entire country. Just thinking about it makes you vomit a little.

That said, every market goes through cycles so it's unlikely that the boom will last indefinitely. The flip side of the considerable financial growth of the English game is that many of the new customers are more fickle than the football fans of old. There's always something else competing for the interest of consumers in that market and they don't have the deeper ties to a particular club that characterise the traditional football fan.

[lancyclaret]

Who would you say is the best ref you see?
I always thought Michael Oliver was pretty good.

A couple of years ago Oliver was probably the best - but now, like many others, he is on first-name terms with the "Big Six" teams' players.

Personally, I think Mike Dean is still the most competent, but that's not hard.

[Pacman1903]

The keeper Pope dislocated his shoulder on Thursday according to SSN

[Don_Corleone]

The keeper Pope dislocated his shoulder on Thursday according to SSN

Are they still blaming our player for it? Looking at the replays I thought it was his own player that clattered him whilst challenging Cosgrove.

[Pacman1903]

They didnt say. Just its a disclocation and they dont know how long hes oot

[neilthedon]

Are they still blaming our player for it? Looking at the replays I thought it was his own player that clattered him whilst challenging Cosgrove.

Were they blaming us ? I know i thought it was Ferguson landing down with him, but my English mate down here tells me it was their Centre Half who fell on top of him . The boy Tardowski or whitever, knee right on the shoulder.

Shame like, . That Centre half seems to be a bittie clumsy, eh ? Tickling Cosgrove in the face for the penalty, jumping on his own Goalie..............Better watch out for him on Thursday !

[its_a_goal]

The keeper Pope dislocated his shoulder on Thursday according to SSN

Just as well that Willie Collum wasn't Ref then, he would have definitely sent off somebody for that

[donsdaft]

I didn't go but I was told that we had Collum for the friendly against West Brom.

Surely we get to pick who we want to referee a friendly, why put money in that c'unt's pocket?