Force Fed TV Diet Leaves Supporters Hungry

So, three o'clock Saturday comes, switch on Sky Soccer Saturday and what do we find? One Premiership fixture only. What with European commitments and TV scheduling the vast majority of Premiership matches were moved to Sunday kick offs varying from 12:00pm to 4:10pm. Perhaps the most cruel of all, Sunderland fans being asked to travel early on Sunday to get to London for a midday start. Anyone who uses trains on a Sunday in this country will know that is not a pleasant prospect. If you are attending matches, home, away or neutral, this raises some important logistical issues. Without a fixed schedule, the disruption to arrangements is another headache and inconvenience to the long-suffering football supporter. Nowadays it has become almost impossible to plan well in advance to attend matches.

Judging by a limited fans survey on BBC Football Focus website, only 32% found this to be a problem. What the survey does not say is whether these were attending supporters or merely TV viewers - both of whom deserve to have their needs met in our opinion. But this does throw up a very important point. Why can't supporters pay to view whatever match they wish to view when it is being played? Not just Manchester United versus Liverpool or Arsenal versus Chelsea, but every game in every league. Cameras are there anyway so additional technical costs would presumably be minimal. At the moment we are force fed whatever matches TV companies agree to show and the way contracts are drawn up, clubs have to be shown a certain number of times. Blackburn versus Wigan for example, will presumably be very interesting to supporters of those sides but frankly leaves most neutrals pretty cold. By having to make this commitment, many matches shown hold little interest to neutrals - gone are the days when TV-starved football supporters would watch any live match being screened. Conversely, it is unfair on supporters of say Wigan, who invariably get to see their team live only when they are being thrashed by one of the Big Four. This has undoubtedly led to supporter 'fatigue' where TV is concerned. Without going into specific details, mainly because we haven't got them, our limited research shows that, whilst the numbers of Sky subscribers has increased significantly, viewing figures for individual matches are falling.

With this mind, RTG calls for all matches to be live with a simpler, fixed schedule. This would allow supporters to view whatever match they choose or attend matches with improved ability to plan ahead. What?! Showing all matches live will hit attendances won't it? Well, we're not so sure it will in fact. Firstly, most keen supporters currently attend matches even when they are on live and will continue to do so. Secondly, the cost for neutral supporters simply to attend a game because they 'fancy it' has become prohibitive. In addition, over-hyped, media-fuelled rivalries have led to many supporters to feel that they are betraying their own team if they attend as a neutral, especially as they are filling the coffers of a potential rival.

We believe that having all matches live will increase significantly the revenues to football in general. Aaah, we here you say. All that this will do is to propel the so-called Big Four into a financial stratosphere that will forever render competition as meaningless. Not so. Clearly, a much more equitable form of distribution across both the Premiership and the Football League must be introduced.

In the end, we have no empirical evidence to support what the impact will be. However, we believe it is only a question of time before it will happen but we want to be in a position where the game as a whole benefits not just a few wealthy owners. This echoes a key platform for the reasoning behind our campaign to Reclaim the Game. It is clear that the corporate vultures circling the English Premiership would push for this in their own interests. Consider this. The worldwide audiences for a key Premiership clash can measure in the hundreds of millions if not billions. If viewers pay only £1 to watch, the revenue from one match could be more than the combined annual income of the top six clubs in the world (taking 2005/6 season figures). Clubs could afford to even let us in for free!

Radical as this idea might sound, the key issue is how this revenue would be distributed amongst the clubs and the England national team. However, given the current corporate ownership taking over the Premiership, this is extremely unlikely to happen. It may be that certain key steps have to be taken first such as clubs being owned by supporters' trusts (a cause we wholeheartedly believe in). It's about time this debate happened.

RTG Weekends' Events

• Henk Ten Cate, the current Ajax manager, seems to be the new flavour of Abramovich's month. Talks are in progress for him taking on a role at Chelsea - views vary as to what role that will be - though it would appear to be initially under the new manager, Avram Grant. Is this some new insight into the structure of football management that Abramovich (or god forbid for Chelsea's sake, Peter Kenyon) have adopted for the future? It will be interesting to see how this pans out. Watch this space.
• MaClaren Drops Alonso for Next Season, ran the sports news ticker... . Quite right, actually, not only is he bad for the English cause, RTG don't think he was eligible to play for England anyway! Oh, oh I see... China formula 1. Now we get it....
• Steve Bruce: looks like now that Birmingham's takeover is finally going to happen, he will be replaced by a more "fashionable" manager, despite his very good record at Birmingham. We're told it's because his face doesn't fit. With the, non paid for re-arrangements of his face, it wouldn't, would it?

Hats Off, Take a Bow (or not)

Player of the week: Afonso Alves of Dutch First division club, Heerenveen who scored 7 of his side's 9 goals in thrashing of Heracles Almelo this weekend. This included 4 in 10 minutes! Not English league, we know, but it is a Dutch record and extremely worthy.

Villain of the Week: Dida. Cheat. Simple as that. Plus, we still can't work out who the hell voted to make him the World's no. 1 goalkeeper. Over-rated.

Cliche of the week: Shevchenko and anything to do with him and the various Chelsea staff he seems to get on with/pissed off with. If he would just play like he used to do, none of this bullshit would be coming his way.

Shock of the Week: Underhyped England team doing very well! Ok, it was Rugby, but at least it didn't go to penalties!