niallers

Setanta Ireland Secures Saturday afternoon Barclays Premier League Games for next Season

Setanta Sports announced today that they have been awarded the rights by the Premier League to show up to 33 live 3pm Saturday games in the Republic of Ireland next season. The addition of these Premier League games to Setanta’s live sports programming has been warmly welcomed by the broadcaster. Niall Cogley CEO of Setanta Sports Ireland commented “We are delighted to announce our success in winning back Saturday afternoon Barclays Premier League games for next season. Traditionally this has been the most popular and best performing slot for us of all of our sporting rights. “We anticipate a high level of quality this season with 9 of our first 13 games featuring Top 4 teams including Manchester United at Wigan on Aug 22nd and Liverpool visiting Bolton on Aug 29th. Our opening game will see Carlos Tevez spearheading the new look Manchester City who kick- off their season at Blackburn.” Cogley went on to add “Although there has been some confusion about Setanta Sports in Ireland following recent developments in the UK we are now delighted to confirm that we will continue to provide our subscribers with the best value premium sports service in Ireland and the most attractive sports option for all television advertisers.” In addition to the Barclays Premier League, sports fans tuning into Setanta can continue to see live Magners League, Champions League, the new Europa League, Formula 1 and golf including The Augusta Masters and Padraig Harrington’s historic title defence at this week’s Open Championship as well as our domestic staples including the Setanta Sports Cup & Eircom League, the Allianz Leagues, and schools rugby.

Good news for us irish as we were shown most last year and i got my fee down to E5 a month til oct

I wish they'd re-run some quality comedies like married with children, Al is brilliant.

YouTube - Al Bundy and fat women

My girlfriend is 5 months pregnant and i'm doing my very best to have fernando as a 1st name or at the very least a middle name if its a boy.

Balls. Hopefully RTE pick up those 3pm games Setanta were showing in Ireland.

i agree, as if we weren't on sky on sunday we'd nearly always be on set at 3 on a saturday which was great.

I hope they fuck off and wouldnt care if the snuffed it, BUT, are RBS going to call in a loan that is worth over 35million a year in interest to them when a lot of other loans they have are "toxic". Lets hope for our sake they do call it in so the 2 cunts will piss off back to the hole from whence they came.

Well at least we didnt pay 18 million each for a couple of complete tits in anderson and nani. Rafas flops have been generally cheap otions bar morientes and keane. Fergie and even whinger at arse have signed quite a few high profile fuck ups i.e. jeffers 10 m, reyes for near 20 m, kleberson , djemba djemba, wiltord was decent but for the money paid for him not great.

We have 2 playing for ireland: andrews and whelan. I know its not their fault they're useless and we've not got a great pool to chose from but fuck me, worst midfield partnership in europe.

"I'll blow this place up, then i'll be back home in time for cornflakes"

If finnan can get fit we can fuck o'shea to left full cos i thought st. ledger did well with dunne alongside him. Also wit doyle back up top with moaning keane we should give most teams a good go.

We are hardly also rans now mate. And we have a very good chance of qualifying we are almost certain of a play off place arent we? I would have taken that this time last year. We have also qualified for 3 world cups and 1 European Championships in 20 years.

I was being a tad sarcastic but i will agree that we have improved imeasurably since stan the granny rule fan was in charge but while a playoff place is prob ours for the taking, if and when we come up against decent opposition, we really need to replace kilbane, whelan and andrews as try as they might, are no where near good enough. If we get stephen reid back and maybe get nolan to declare for us we'd be sitting pretty with mcgeady out right and duff out left.

You can throw us Irish in too. We might and I stress the word might have a ghost of a chance of qualifying for something, even with whelan and andrews in midfield (shudder).

I read somwhere that our debt is now at 400 million so just for the 2 cunts to break even they couldnt sell it for less. Added to that is that they obviously want a hefty profit each so the cheapest asking price is probably 500-550 million which noone will pay. So we are going to be lumbered with these 2 CUNTS for a long time.

Truly depressing

Its a miacle that we are where we are, team development wise, at the moment considering we've these 2 inept wank stains bleeding us dry and forcing the club to buy players using loans or having to wheel and deal. Rafa must have the patience of a saint cos i would've strangled the cunts, along with coco and moores, long ago.

Liverpool are being made to pay almost £2m to cover the travel, legal and other personal expenses of the club's owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett. The accounts published for the owners' holding company, Kop Football, for the year to 31 July 2008, show that Hicks charged £192,000 for "third party consulting, travel and other expenses," while Gillett charged £129,000 for "reimbursable travel, legal, personnel and other expenses".

The two men charged significant amounts of money for the same expenses, incurred by themselves personally "and affiliated companies", during the previous seven-month accounting period, which ran from 18 December 2006 to 31 July 2007, too. Hicks charged Kop £198,000, while Gillett charged £375,000.

The pair also claimed almost £1m for what are described in the accounts as "transaction-related expenses". Hicks and affiliated companies charged Kop £133,000 in this category, while Gillett's figure was much higher: £823,000. The total charged to Kop in expenses, for the owners and their affiliated companies, in 18 months from their takeover in early February 2007 to the accounts' end date of 31 July 2008, was £1.85m.

The accounts do not explain in further detail what "consulting, travel, legal, personnel and other expenses" were, or which were regarded as "reimbursable", and Hicks and Gillett were not available to respond with details yesterday. Nor was there any explanation of what constituted "transaction-related expenses". However, the only substantial transaction from December 2006 to July 2007 was the pair's takeover of the club itself. They borrowed £185m from the Royal Bank of Scotland to buy Liverpool in February 2007, and the club has been made responsible for paying the interest on that loan. Now it seems the club has also been made to pay for the pair's costs of doing the deal.

The accounts, published last week, showed that Kop owed a total of £313m to the Royal Bank of Scotland and *Wachovia in January this year, and that £36.8m was payable in interest last year. Kop's only asset is Liverpool Football Club so the interest, and the reimbursement of expenses, have to come from the club's income, made from television, supporters paying to watch matches, and other commercial earnings. Hicks and Gillett did loan Kop £58.2m from their holding company in the Cayman Islands last year.

Not all the expenses claimed had been paid by July 2008. The accounts state that of the £523,000 charged by Hicks and his affiliates, £188,000 was still owed, which meant he had been paid £335,000 by Liverpool. Of the £1.327m Gillett claimed for his expenses, £255,000 was outstanding, so Liverpool had paid him £1.072m.

The revelation about the expenses has further incensed supporters' groups who have campaigned for Hicks and Gillett to sell up and leave. The groups accuse the pair of breaking their promise not to make the club pay for their own borrowings to take it over, as the Glazer family did at Manchester United. Liverpool was sold because the previous chairman, David Moores, and chief executive, Rick Parry, believed the club needed wealthy backers to build the long-planned new stadium on Stanley Park, yet the North American pair have not found the finance.

James McKenna, spokesman for the Spirit of Shankly fans' group, said: "Hicks and Gillett were the multimillionaires who promised not to do a Glazer and that work would start on the new stadium within 60 days. Yet now we find, as fans, not only are we paying for their takeover, but we are also paying for their costs of having done it, and, for coming over to visit the football club. They were supposed to bring investment to take the club forward, but it turns out we're even paying their travel costs."

BASTARDS!

a friend of mine got a few diff teams shirts off thefootballshirt.com including our home and away last season and they were excellent quality

Who the fuck is 51 last one too.

Christ, its 13 years since i did my leaving cert. Old age is creeping up on me, bastard!

Well in fairness the guy who wrote the article seems to have done a good job in pointing out cohen's obvious cuntishness and sets the record straight in regard to his lies. I only hope people start seeing this guy for the prick and shit stirrer he really is across the pond and he gets the bullet.

didnt see the other thread , my apologies.

Steven Cohen, co-host of the World Soccer Daily radio show, has been at it again.

While the rest of the world last week was paying tribute to the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough Tragedy, Cohen was complaining on his U.S. radio show that Liverpool fans failed to take responsibility for Hillsborough as well as claiming that if 6,000-8,000 ticketless fans had not shown up, the Hillsborough Disaster would never have happened.

The problem is, he’s wrong. Dead wrong.

Steven Cohen’s Statements About the Hillsborough Disaster

So what did Cohen say that was so wrong? Here are three statements that Cohen made about the Hillsborough Disaster on his Monday, April 13, 2009 episode of World Soccer Daily (note, you can listen to the entire audio clip at the bottom of this post):

“People showing up without ticket, hell bent in getting into somewhere where they shouldn’t be going because they don’t have tickets, is the root cause of [the Hillsborough Disaster].”

“I’m yet to read anybody write in this weekend’s Sunday papers in England, where they’re all doing big commemorations about the 96, and why we should never forget and how it’s changed the game, nobody discusses the 6-8,000 who showed up without tickets and my argument has always been, if those people don’t show up, this never happens.”

“[Hillsborough] is a stadium that week-in week-out, Sheffield Wednesday used without incident.”

World Soccer Daily Playing With Fire

Hosted by Steven Cohen and Kenny Hassan, the Los Angeles-based show is broadcast nationwide each weekday on Sirius Satellite Radio and also available as a daily podcast, which is one of the top 10 most popular sports podcasts on iTunes.

Without a doubt, Cohen is the voice of soccer in America. Since the launch of his network in May 2002, Cohen has succeeded in growing World Soccer Daily into the must-listen show about soccer in the United States. Coupled with his weekly co-host slot on Fox Soccer Channel’s Fox Football Fone-In show, 46-year-old Cohen has built a sizeable following, many of whom are impressionable fans who are relatively new to the sport and hang on his every word.

That’s fine when it’s fun and games, but when Cohen (a Chelsea supporter) spews out misinformation about the Hillsborough Disaster, it’s dangerous. One, because his beliefs about Hillsborough are completely wrong. And two, because by making his beliefs public, he’s giving many newbie soccer fans false information and thereby spreading the wrong information about the cause of the disaster. With such a large audience on radio and television, he has a responsibility to educate listeners on what really happened on April 15, 1989.

The Facts About The Hillsborough Tragedy

To dispel his myths, here are the facts:

“The immediate cause of the gross overcrowding and hence the disaster was the failure, when gate C was opened, to cut off access to the central pens which were already overfull,” — The Interim Taylor Report, paragraph 265.

“Planning apart, however, it should have been clear in the control room where there was a view of the pens and of the crowd at the turnstiles that the tunnel had to be closed. If orders had been given to that effect when gate C was opened, the fans could have been directed to the empty areas of the wings and this disaster could still have been avoided. Failure to give that order was a blunder of the first magnitude,” — The Interim Taylor Report, paragraph 231.

“I have already found that there was not an abnormally large number of fans without tickets on this occasion. With one or two exceptions, the police witnesses themselves did not subscribe to the ‘conspiracy’ theory (of a large number

of late-arriving ticketless supporters). I am satisfied that the large concentration at Leppings Lane from 2.30 pm to 2.50 pm did not arrive as a result of any concerted plan. There were, I accept, small groups without tickets who were willing to exploit any adventitious chance of getting into the ground. They, together with the minority who had drunk too much, certainly aggravated the problem faced by the police. But that main problem was simply one of large numbers packed into the small area outside the turnstiles,” The Interim Taylor Report, paragraph 208.

“The police witnesses who most impressed me did not consider the number of ticketless fans to be inordinately large. This accords with two other sources of evidence,” The Interim Taylor Report, paragraph 200.

“Sheffield Wednesday FC’s own admission count system showed the terrace did not exceed its 10,100 capacity (for the Leppings Lane end). As part of their analysis, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) counted the number of [Liverpool] supporters entering the ground, including those through the turnstiles, through Gate C and even those who climbed over the turnstiles. They gave three admission figures based on their analysis. Their first figure was 9,267, their ‘best estimate’ was 9,734, and their third figure was a ‘maximum estimate’ of 10,124. The HSE report stated it was unlikely that the terrace exceeded 10,124 and that total admissions were approximately equal to the designated capacity of 10,100 people. Taylor surmised there was no substance to the allegation that ticketless fans caused the Disaster,” The Hillsborough Football Disaster: Context And Consequences, page 17. Also watch video evidence of the fans walking through the turnstiles and walking into the tunnel.

The Taylor Report exonerated the Liverpool fans of any culpability. “The main reason for the disaster was the failure of police control,” The Interim Taylor Report, paragraph 278.

Leppings Lane stand was deemed unsuitable in 1981 after 38 Spurs fans suffered crush related injuries. Sheffield Wednesday never carried out the work required. In addition to the 1981 incident, crushes also occurred at Hillsborough in 1987 and 1988. In fact Liverpool played Nottingham Forest in the same stage of the tournament one year prior at the same ground where Liverpool fans were crushed. Liverpool filed an official complaint prior to the 1989 FA-Cup semi final to air their concerns about safety.

Cohen was absolutely wrong on his April 13th show regarding the statements he made about the Hillsborough Tragedy. There were not, as he claimed, 6,000-8,000 ticketless fans. Cohen was emphatically wrong when he claimed that Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough Stadium was used week-in week-out without incident. And the reason none of the English newspapers last Sunday discussed the “6-8,000 who showed up without tickets” is because they didn’t exist. The vast majority of English journalists and pundits know better because they’ve taken time to study the facts rather than to believe the lies told by The Sun and the South Yorkshire Police.

Sure, there were a very small minority of ticketless fans at the ground. And sure, some of the supporters were drunken (as at any football game or sporting event), but the fact of the matter is that Cohen is living in the 80s with the inaccurate statements he’s spewing out.

The Liverpool supporters were a victim of a combination of mistakes by the South Yorkshire Police (for failing to notice that the central pen was overcrowded while the pens to the left and right had room for more spectators, as well as not directing the Liverpool fans who came through the turnstiles away from the central pen), Sheffield Wednesday Football Club (Leppings Lane was ill-suited to admit the 10,100 fans, had too few turnstiles and the club failed to fix those and other issues between 1981-1989 even though they were well aware of them) and the Football Association (for deciding to play the semi-final match at Hillsborough despite previous crushing incidents).

Cohen’s History of Blaming Liverpool Fans For Hillsborough

Cohen’s comments last week aren’t the first time he’s created controversy on American airwaves regarding Hillsborough. On December 5, 2006, he appeared on the Fox Football Fone-In TV show on the U.S. network Fox Soccer Channel and claimed that Liverpool fans were responsible for Hillsborough. He then apologized on the December 12 episode of Fox Football Fone-In, but the damage was clearly already done.

In April, 2007, he again blamed the Liverpool fans for causing the Hillsborough Disaster, this time on his radio show.

He may have apologized on Fox Football Fone-In December 12, 2006, but his views haven’t changed one iota — rendering his 2006 apology virtually meaningless.

Comparisons to Kelvin MacKenzie

Cohen’s misinformed views about what caused the Hillsborough Disaster are similar in context to those of Kelvin MacKenzie.

On April 19, 1989, MacKenzie, the former editor of The Sun newspaper published a sensationalized account of what happened at Hillsborough. MacKenzie’s newspaper that day alleged that ticketless and drunken Liverpool F.C. fans were responsible for the disaster, having supposedly tried to fight their way into the stadium by rushing the turnstiles and attacking policemen outside the ground.

It’s taken 20 years of education in the United Kingdom to try to get the public to understand what was the real cause of the Hillsborough Disaster.

Then in November 2006, just days before Cohen said basically the same thing, MacKenzie again claimed that drunken Liverpool fans caused the disaster.

“I’m still reading the same old stuff about who’s responsible. And it’s the police, it’s the stadium, it’s whatever,” said Cohen in the April 13 radio episode. Cohen then inferred that the Liverpool fans don’t take responsibility for their own actions regarding the events that led up to the Hillsborough Tragedy. Despite his December, 2006 apology, he obviously hasn’t changed his controversial beliefs and he continues to appear on the Fox Football Fone-In show week-in week out.

It’s fitting that on the April 13 episode of the Fox show, it was co-host Nick Webster who paid tribute to the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough Disaster in a pre-recorded segment at the end of the show. Cohen wasn’t included.

Conclusion

Twenty years after the Hillsborough Disaster, we’re still hearing the same old lies about what happened on that fateful day. It’s time for people to educate themselves about what really happened and stand up against those who fabricate misinformation. For our current generation and future generations, we owe it to them and the 96 who died to tell the real truth of what transpired in Sheffield on April 15, 1989.

To learn more about what really happened at the Hillsborough Disaster, read the Interim Taylor Report, and visit the Hillsborough Football Disaster and Hillsborough Justice Campaign websites.

They played it at the end of the memorial programme on lfctv today along with the pictures of those who died and i'm not ashamed to admit that i started to well up and a good few tears were shed. Just seeing their pictures made it far more real than just the names and you could see they were all normal people like you and me, smiling in the photos.

29 free kicks against us and most of them were in our half so they could either shoot or knock it into the box.

Well if its 10 days he'l be back for the arse game and since we should beat blackburn without him and ,sorry to say, we're prob out of europe its not too bad. Still a bit of a kick in the stones i suppose.

He looked a shadow of his usual self last night and i thought it was just that Essien played him well but there was definately something a miss with him. I thought he was still injured a little and now the Mail are reporting that he's to go to hospital today for a scan. The report is like a sidenote so hopefully its nothing to worry about but if its the same injury that he had the op on last august he'l be out for 2-3 weeks and that would be a disaster.

Sport | Mail Online

A game from my younger years played down by the seaside late 80's. 1st proper football game.