Is the Premier League worth £3bn plus?

the_flying_pig

thor wrote: »

Sorry I do that on purpose as it always gives the same response i.e, ABUs pretending that they thought I meant a smaller club such as Leeds or the ones you mentioned. It always gives me a chuckle as it never fails. Deep down you know if 'United' is mentioned, the vast majority of the population home and abroad will think Manchester United first and I am including places with their own 'Utds' apart from Newcastle maybe...

Depends on context. In Sheffield, where there are also two biggish pro clubs [unlike in the cities of leeds or newcastle] whose club names both start with the main city name and hence do actually need the second part of their club name to avoid confusion then 'united' would always, to a speaker, mean sheff utd. In Manchester 'united' would always, to a speaker, mean Manyoo.

In wider conversation (I.e. with someone not from those places) it is genuinely out of place. Not so very different to 'rovers' or 'town'. It genuinely makes the listener have to expend a fraction of a second's effort thinking. You're right that one quickly comes to the conclusion that they most likely mean Manyoo, the context usually gives it away as here, but for a moment the honest reaction is 'eh?' if Manyoo had a unique second-part-of-name like villa, argyle, or whoever it'd be different but...

the_flying_pig

thor wrote: »

...yeah not really fair to ask Utd to play with one hand tied behind their backs.

Are all those armchair fans in hastings etc a source of pride then?

chewmylegoff

thor wrote: »

yeah not really fair to ask Utd to play with one hand tied behind their backs.

all that would happen if man u got the lion's share of the TV money is that the glazers would refuse to spend the money on new players and instead pay the money to themselves, and all the mid and lower table teams would become insolvent and go into administration and have to sack all of their players. it would hardly be an improvement.

i would have thought that fans of all teams would prefer a competitive league to some kind of processional farce. the premiership has got a bit more interesting in the last couple of years now we don't just have the same 4 teams in contention every year. would be a bit of a backward step to seek to reverse this situation.

thor

the_flying_pig wrote: »

In wider conversation (I.e. with someone not from those places) it is genuinely out of place. Not so very different to 'rovers' or 'town'. It genuinely makes the listener have to expend a fraction of a second's effort thinking.

Wow, you really believe that!

thor

the_flying_pig wrote: »

Are all those armchair fans in hastings etc a source of pride then?

Well yeah why not? Not only do Utd have more fans in Manchester than Man City (unless you fall for all the hype coming from the blue half of the city which is complete b*llocks) but they have more fans all over the world. Just because your team is not attractive enough to gather support elsewhere do you have to be envious?

thor

chewmylegoff wrote: »

all that would happen if man u got the lion's share of the TV money is that the glazers would refuse to spend the money on new players and instead pay the money to themselves,

You know something? You are completely correct. The Glazers would indeed gobble up the Sky money. In fact that is exactly what they have been doing since they took over and forced Utd to pay the interest on their loan for the privilege of it.
So this means they were already playing with one hand tied behind their back.