FanchesterCity

I think you'll find that such agreements are more likely to be in breach than exempt. The fact it happens frequently is no excuse. Most of us break the speed limit. If caught doing so, it's generally "tough s**t" There is a 'block exemption' on vertical agreements (selling up the supply chain) for minor companies with minimal market share. But the likes of Umbro / Adidas etc won't be falling under such You should read the decision on the FA / Man U / Blacks / Umbro / JD Sports etc. It reads like most businesses "Umbro getting mad at JD sports for selling cheaply and annoying Man U etc, and threatening to stop supplying them". Happens all the time!... still, they got found out and all of them fined (to varying degrees)

For those interested: This is the decision http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/ca98_public_register/decisions/replicakits.pdf Makes for interesting reading. Many folks are totally ignorant of competition law, and whilst it's broken all the time, you CAN be done for it. As silly and trivial as it sounds, if you run a newsagent in your area, and you agree with other newsagents that paper delivery should be 10.00 a week, that's price fixing. YES - it applies to joe blogs ltd, as much as the big boys! Most folks don't even realise they are doing it. Finally, I know the term 'price fixing' is broad brush, but exclusivity agreements CAN be a form of retail price maintenance by manipulating the market. One should always be very careful of such. When challenged, the majority will be found to be in breach of the law.

There are SO many opportunities that clubs can use... Website: The more attractive, the more hits they get, this pushes up the price to any potential advertisers (although some club sites don't have advertising) Content Subscriptions: Many fans will pay for content, via the web, on their phone, or even TV channels etc. Actually, in truth the majority of fans pay for content (Sky, BBC et al) Clothing: Clothing is huge. Women and kids clothing is often neglected. Stylish, understated casual wear is a lot more popular than a traditional football shirt. It's the way forward Gift packages: These are a classic at xmas (and of course, birthdays, father's day etc). From a stadium tour, to a meal at the club, or guest dinner etc. A nice little earner for the club and a lifesaver for wife and kids who don't have a clue what to buy you! Discount ticket prices: Another nice little trick to offer cheaper tickets for cup games etc, providing you pay up front. A lot of fans go for it... call it a 'cup scheme' by any other name. Open Days / Classrooms etc. An ideal way to get schoolkids into the school, make a name for yourself, and generally 'do a bit of good'. I know City have a few classrooms, with computer suites and lots of education material in the ground. I suspect Everton might have too. Good PR and fosters early love of the club. Corporate meetings. Blackburn and Bolton do this a lot - open the rooms during the day and evenings for corporate meetings. They prove to be very popular even amongst non football fans. It's HUGE stadium going to waste. Use it! And there's plenty more too. As for kit licensing - that's between the club and the kit manufacturer / retailers etc. Only a few years ago Man United, the FA and Umbro (amongst others) were found guilty of price fixing. There is NOTHING to stop a retailer selling Everton kits. Truth is, there's not enough money in it (for them). If there was, Tesco would be flogging them left right and center. It's against the law to deliberate prevent a specific retailer selling the goods and/or setting any minimum price. (This is partly what United and Umbro et al got into trouble because they didn't like certain retailers discounting their kits...

I am going to go for a rather unexpected (for any sane person) result: Arsenal 0 : 1 Everton Against the odds, I still think Arsenal are a tad frail, and Everton are a robust outfit. You're not leaking goals for fun, and I think morale has improved with recent results. I really do have a sneaky feeling Everton can snatch something here. It's just a feeling,...

Mike O exposed his Tubular Balls? No wonder the crowd applauded

Mike Oldfield - Crisis

Refereeing Standards. Oxymoron! I'd like to see players get more punishment for conning the ref. If they get caught out on cam after the game, then ban them. It can't be easy refereeing, and stuff does look very different from two different angles / slow motion etc, and it's just not helped by players diving too, or clutching their face having had their hair ruffled. I've seen Micah Richards - a proper heavyweight fall over in the box umpteen times, so I know all teams have such players. They need sorting out before we sort out the ref. Just my opinion like

I'm going to have to give you the objective and impartial truth: 1) He's hardly spent a penny compared with almost all clubs in the last 5 years 2) His results have been significantly better than 2/3 of the other clubs 3) Everton can attract better players than the very bottom, low spending clubs (meaning they are at a slight advantage in getting the players) 4) Everton - great club, great history, good team - but they can't perform miracles. Pounds / Points ration for Everton is probably the best in the country. Moyes is doing a fine job. The only odd thing is why he's stuck around for so long. We don't KNOW what he'd be like with big money - some managers seemed destined to work best with little money and troubled circumstances. It would be nice to see what he can do with money. Sadly, when (if) the money men come, they'll bring in a new man. So we'll never get to know at Everton.

Welcome! (I'm one of the handful of 'other supporters' on the site i.e. Non-Evertonian). It's a cracking board - if you prefer half decent posts and 'thought' rather than 1000s of loonies posting utter rubbish. Probably the best (rational) site I've stumbled across for Everton.

Everton need to be careful of Stoke on the break. Don't get sucker punched pushing too far up

You can only look at his record. Attitude / weight / penchant for moving on aside. Consistent 1 in 3 scorer. Past his best now, ideal interim measure at Blackburn (but they should be looking to replace asap).

Galleries pose no greater threat than any other feature. The biggest threats to most boards are: - MySQL injection attacks not being well protected against - Scripts being execute / included in user posts (particularly prevalent in rich text / html formatted posts) - Abusive posts / naughty content (a sure fire way for your host to get worried and have you take down the site) <--- potential issue of galleries One of the most obvious and often overlook 'hacks' is that any administrator MIGHT have been compromised via some OOB technique (trojan is prime candidate). From there on in, the hacker can 'play' with your mind and paranoia by slowly breaking your board, site and generally annoying you in stages. It's 'fun' in their minds.

I used to build my own PCs, found that in the end, the dwindling number of manufacturers meant that the few remaining manufacturers made so many, the price of their systems was cheaper than trying to build your own. IF you absolutely want to spec every component, then sure, build your own, but the savings aren't what they used to be (IMO). Off the shelf is usually ok, and adjust the graphics card / disk accordingly (if they let you spec it). The only thing I do first is backup the drive then wipe it!... full of crap, and poorly configured (often). Tip for new PC builders - get into 'portable apps' - makes for a much easier life.

Damn right at biased commentary. I say that in all honesty... City were 'average' against Arsenal the other night - the moment they score, and the commentators talk about 'the difference up front' etc. Our forward line was dire! They talk utter crap. As for Spurs - well, it's just a bloody Spurs / Media love in. Half of TalkSport support them. Great team, playing well, but some proper commentary PLEASE. De don't care how much a player cost, or how 'settled' Modric is again... we just want honest opinion on performance.

It's only the parent company, but in reality that'll have a knock on effect. Not quite bust yet, but the administrators will surely look at the subsiduaries and say "Portsmouth F.C. is not good for the books, lose it if possible" Getting someone to buy it - that's the hard part. You can't compare Portsmouth and Everton though. Just cos someone buys a cheap club doesn't mean you can sell an expensive one. It's all just more evidence of the sorry state of our game. All the hype and 'success' we see on TV masks the true mess.

Seems awful on the surface, but... You can't just have any old charity stopping the streets and costing the council money. You'd soon be moaning with the taxes go up and jobs are cut. I don't think it's quite as bad as it initially sounds. Council (tossers that many of them are) are in a no win situation here.

Nobody!... unless you bought Tom Daly! Might be able to teach him how to dive properly ;-)

I just think he likes to understate his ambition, or rather set expectation reasonably low, and end up exceeding it. Setting your stall out with 'We expect to be top 6' in some folks minds is setting yourself up for a fall. There are other managers - Rednapp for instance, who'll go the opposite way "we can win the PL, FOR SURE!!" etc etc always upbeat. Neither is right or wrong, but I do sometimes think managers who moan a lot just tend to bring criticism on themselves from others outside the club (other fans!). Then again, who cares what other fans think? Wenger never sees anything, Fergie gets bad decisions, Mancini just says 'this is football', Moyes never has money, McCarthy's constantly unlucky, Harry is always looking to bring in a Top Top player etc They all have their styles

The primary role of the board and for that matter Mr Moyes is to ensure Everton remain in business. That is above ALL else. Higher positions, trophies, wins instead of draws, entertaining play et al ALL come behind survival. Yes Everton are a big club, and 'survival' doesn't mean I'm categorising them alongside Portsmouth (for instance), but still, keeping the business afloat is the number one task. Since it's clear that Moyes has next to nothing to spend, and hasn't spent much historically, that puts him on a par with the very bottom clubs in the division. No matter HOW big Everton are as a club, or how great their support, HE (Moyes) is only at the same advantage as the lowly teams at the bottom - without a penny to spend. The only thing in his favour that (arguably) help him are that Everton are a more attractive club to join (so he can win over players that the lesser clubs couldn't) and playing AT GP (in theory) offers a more exciting experience than Wigan. He's competing with Wolves, Blackburn and Wigan (in terms of financial resources available to him), and he's winning by a country mile! (PLEASE do not read this as 'Everton = Wolves = Blackburn = Wigan)

Bit harsh @ shit ground. 'Constrained by its location' would be more accurate.

I think it's getting harder and harder to claim 'all is calm' aboard the ship. There's every reason to suspect the leaked mails were genuine, and regardless of them being purely opinion on his part, it's probably indicative of other's views too. This is what happens when things aren't right. Seen far worse cock ups than a few leaked emails though!

Europe can really hurt. If you rotate the team, it upsets the consistency, if you keep the same lads, they're down 10% come the next game. Not always but often. Even so, I think this could be tough. Everton aren't really scoring for fun, and Stoke will be itching to get back on track and there's usually a lively atmosphere at GP. Don't forget to dry your balls ;-)

Can see this being a trickier game for Everton than the last two. More of a test to prove themselves as top 8 or establish that there's still a bit of work to do. Alas, I feel a draw could be on the cards. Everton 1 : 1 Stoke

Have some respect. I'm not a great fan of his behaviour sometimes, but name me a single team who doesn't have players capable of the same sometimes? A player doesn't deserve that. Why not just say "fantastic player, better still if he just focused on playing"? Thank God we know you're not typical of Everton fans

You can try http://www.mancityfans.net Should be a bit less aggressive then Bluemoon (which is only aggressive cos it's big and therefore attracts more nutters).