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Why BT getting into bed with UEFA could shaft us all

Not everyone is happy with BT

"Money is the root of all evil".

That could prove to be true if the new TV deal for UK coverage of the Champions League is anything to go by. Some people may think it's good for football that the best part of a billion pounds will come into the game.

They'd be wrong.

For a start, that billion pounds doesn't appear out of mid-air, it has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is more than likely going be YOUR wallet – whether you actually pay for your football coverage or not. Secondly, all that money goes to the elite clubs, the ones that are so awash with cash already that they pay obscene salaries and ludicrous transfer fees, making life even tougher for the cash strapped clubs lower down the food chain.

This massive influx of what will inevitably turn out to be YOUR cash, will do nothing to help beleaguered clubs struggling to stay in business or local community projects trying to get kids away from their games consoles and on to the pitch.

Let's look at some of the implications:

ITV

Do you know that there has never been as much live football available free-to-air as there is at the moment? This deal sees the end of that.

Adrian has bugger all left to do

ITV may not be everyone's cup of tea but they have invested in football in recent years and their Champions League coverage and Europa League coverage on ITV4 gives viewers the chance to see not only the top English teams but the cream of Europe live and without subscription.

This has not only been a good thing for viewers, but also for advertisers and UEFA's sponsors who've got maximum bang for their buck from a large mainstream audience. This coverage has also been to Sky's benefit over the years, with many viewers choosing to pay for Sky Sports to get more of the football they develop a taste for from the terrestrial offering.

ITV will lose the FA Cup as well as the European games thanks to BT Sport's land grab of sporting rights. They have retained the England games, but it is highly likely that quality of ITV's England offerings will start to fall if this is the only football they can offer. With less games, there's nowhere to amortise the costs.

There's no point them paying out the big bucks justified by covering several tournaments when they only have a few internationals to cover. A denigration in the quality of their product is all but inevitable.

Bad news for us viewers.

Sky

Those people living under the delusion that their bill for Sky Sports will decrease thanks to them losing Champions League are living in cloud cuckoo land. The upwards pressure BT Sport is putting on sports rights will surely only push the price in the opposite direction.

James and Rupert Murdoch

More bad news for sport fans is that Sky are not going to use the money they would have spent with UEFA on other sports rights, but are going to invest in “original programming” which will undoubtedly mean drama.

This is bad news because Sky have always had a vested interest in nurturing a sport rather than just slapping it on the screen, because they wanted the best product possibly to attract the biggest number of subscribers, sport being at the very heart of their business model.

Sport isn't the beating heart of the BT operation, more of a weapon. It would appear that they've only got into the television to attempt to stop the inroads that Sky (and others) have been making into their core communications business (i.e. Broadband).

This seems to be a long term strategy to damage Sky (check what the deal did to Sky's share price if you're not convinced) and strengthen their own position.

BT has the financial clout to scupper Sky but once they've done that, there's nothing to stop them hiking up their price for their sport channels. Check in your small print and you'll probably see that if you're a BT Broadband customer, you are not going get it free for ever.

The Premier League

Even "dodgy" rich Russians won't help

An inevitable consequence of this massive increase in fees for the broadcasting rights to the Champions League, is that those clubs at the top table are going to get even richer, even more unstoppable.

Even if a rich Arab sugar-daddy or Russian playboy oligarch comes along to invest in a club not at the top table, FFP rules will make it very difficult for that club to compete with the clubs at the top soaking up all the Euro-gravy.

As the gap between the top tier and the rest gets bigger, the actual viability of the Premier League will come into question and inevitably, talk of a breakaway into a European Super League will become more and more of a likely proposition. There have been whispers for years that this is the ultimate aim of the elite European clubs and has been been for the last two decades.

England

The deal won't help Greg's commission much

More money for the top clubs and the threat of losing out massively financially if they can't stay at the top will inevitably lead to them utilising that financial clout to buy ready made players, rather than nurturing and bringing through home-grown English players.

Further more, as they splash the cash on the best foreign players available, established English players get less game time. You've only got to look at Manchester City to see the truth of this.

We've already seen the damage this does to the quality of players available to the national team.

This deal makes the situation worse.

The Fans

Currently you can get two live free to air games in the Europa League every matchday on ITV4. BT Sport's commitment to showing these free to air is not entirely clear, other than the final, the only guarantee of free games appears to one each for the three English teams (should they all qualify), so a lot less than currently.

For the Champions League, ITV currently gets first pick of the Tuesday games to show live free-to-air. Again BT's only commitment is show one live game from each domestic club involved and there's no commitment to the quality of the opposition in those games, so they'll likely keep games against Barca or Bayern to their paying customers and leave the likes of Plzen for the freebies.

Also, even though the coverage will be “free-to-all”, it'll be tucked away in the far recesses of the EPG which means it won't pick up the casual viewer and will inevitably score far less highly in the TV ratings than coverage on ITV would.

Champions League will effectively become ghettoised and Europa League games will reach a minuscule audience (some Wigan Athletic games on BT Sport have barely registered any viewers). This can't be a good thing. Look what ghettoisation has done to boxing.

The biggest impact for fans will be financial, because sooner or later, BT will need to get that money back from somewhere, be it higher prices for the sport channels or an increase on the cost of broadband.

Even if you're not with BT, you'll probably end up forking out. Virgin Media had to broker a wholesale deal for the channels to stop sport obsessed fans jumping ship and you can bet your bottom dollar that'll increase on the back of the Euro-deal and Sky will have to bid big to retain the Premier League and or they'll be in big doo-doo.

A few parasitic football agents will no doubt think all this is fantastic but it's bad news for the rest of us.

It might even be bad news for the parasites.

One of these days, the football bubble is going to burst.

This deal could very well turn out to be the pin.

Excellent? Pull the other one...

“I thought we were excellent” sayeth Paul Lambert.

The fezzed-up author of this article

Again.

He's like a stuck record these days isn't he? I didn't think we were excellent. Or that good. Or even passable. Maybe Paul Lambert has a different dictionary to me.

The game may have given us a desperately needed and all too rare home win but on performance terms it ranks alongside some of the worst home displays. We've played far better and lost frankly.

Just like at Upton Park a week ago, we didn't seem to have a clue what to do with the ball when in possession, so the plan seemed to be to let Cardiff have it at every available opportunity, safe in the knowledge that they didn't know what do with it either. The Premier League prides itself on being one of the best leagues in the world, yet here were two clueless, feckless teams, seemingly intent on doing precisely nothing for the best part of 75 minutes.

It was a woeful display from both teams, jittery in defence, terminally uncreative in the midfield and devoid of spark and movement up front.

It's true to say that - if we include Jores Okore into the equation – Lambert was without more than half his first XI. However, football is a squad game these days and he has spent a few million quid on the players expected to come in to fill the gaps. Some of them need to do better.

To me, the inclusion of Kozak in the starting line up was part of the problem. So few teams set up with two out and out central strikers any more, which means that any team that does is putting themselves at serious risk of being out gunned in the middle of park and suffering possession-wise as a result. This certainly was the case against Cardiff, with our share of possession dropping to less than 40% at one stage of the game. Less than 40% at home against Premier League newcomers is completely unacceptable.

It would be unfair to blame Kozak himself though. Indeed, he seemed the livelier and more mobile of the two strikers, Benteke looking dejected as he struggled to shake off the manacles imposed by the extra defensive manpower his growing reputation has created. You have to wonder what the deal is with Helenius, who- it seems to me - would be more suited to dropping off the main striker and must be frustrated at not getting a chance even in Gabby and Andi's absence

The midfield so badly missed Fabian Delph that it hurt, Westwood and Sylla too often going for the safe rather than creative ball (and even then sometimes giving it away) and El Ahmadi being so vanilla as to be barely noticeable at all. Tonev scampered about the place like an excited puppy, all energy and goodwill but with very little in the way of tactical nous. Having a wayward hopeless shot from miles out when there are far better options is rapidly becoming his trademark and he's already garnering such an unfavourable reputation amongst the Villa faithful that will prove hard to shake off. Reading his name out on the team sheet now creates an audible groan, which is most unfortunate.

A lot of people expressed dismay at Lowton's omission, but I wasn't one of the them. I thought Matt Jarvis had made him look quite ordinary at West Ham. The issue here is that while Bacuna can do a competent job at right back, what we really want to see is him hurting opposition defences at the other end, so it is to be hoped that Lambert can be convinced to give young Matt an extended run in the team to get his mojo back and utilise Leandro to give us some much needed creativity further up.

Bacuna seems to me such an adaptable player and now he's settling in to the league, a role with more freedom could give us the spark in the midfield we're so obviously missing. They'll certainly be a great buzz whenever we get a free kick from here on in.

While some say the defence has improved with two clean sheets on the bounce, I remain unconvinced. Cardiff and West Ham merely lacked the operatives to pounce on the silly mistakes that are still being made by both Clark and Baker, though I will concede that Vlaar is looking far better now he seems to have curbed his tendency to go wandering off.

So do I trust Paul Lambert to sort it all out? Well, I do actually. I'm sure he's aware of areas where we need to improve and was probably as frustrated as we were at half-time yesterday. It's our job to get annoyed and his job to fix it and put smiles on our faces. I think he can, but it is gonna take time and dodgy performance or not, the three points his team put in the bag yesterday does give him some more time and should muffle the burgeoning "Lambert Out" faction for a few weeks longer. Wins against the Tesco boys and the Mackems and everyone will wonder what all the fuss was about.

I suppose it's the done thing to describe your team as “excellent” when talking to the media and you don't wash your dirty linen in public. Doesn't stop me swearing at the radio though.

And just remember the next time he describes the fans as “excellent”, he has a very loose interpretation of the word...