BWFC 24

Ukraine Versus England Internet and Cinema Only — Good or Bad?

The Future of Live Football

If you want to watch England in this Saturday’s World Cup qualifier against Ukraine you have three choices — travel to Dnipropetrovsk or watch it live on the internet or at a cinema.

Setanta would have been showing the match on TV if the company had not ceased trading in June 2009. A press release from digital media company Perform explains how they became involved in the deal.

“The international football agency Kentaro, acquired the broadcast rights from the Ukrainian FA and had sold the game to Setanta in December 2007. However the pay-TV broadcaster went into administration over the summer leaving this key match without a UK broadcaster.

With no offers on the table from UK free to air or pay-TV broadcasters Kentaro decided to seek the widest possible online audience, appointing digital sport specialist Perform, to market and stream the match online, on a pay-per-view basis.”

Being able to watch live sport online is not new concept, however this historic, yet contentious broadcast, is the first time that an England match has been broadcast exclusively on the internet and probably the first time there has been live football in cinemas too.
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Will Winter Dampen Ivan Klasnic’s Positivity?

Bolton’s newcomer Ivan Klasnic was interviewed for today’s match programme and Megson or Gartside made sure he used the word ‘positive’ in relation to the club’s mentality.

“I was impressed with everything that I saw. The stadium is excellent and everyone at the club has a positive mentality.”

The word ‘positive’ always seems to pop up during player interviews, I’m fairly certain that Kevin Davies, Jussi Jaaskelainen, even Johan Elmander used it preseason, along with the Bolton’s new signings who praised the positive attitudes of their new colleagues.

Should we believe that there is a constant positive attitude amongst the Bolton squad or is it just spin? Perhaps there is a clause in the players’ contracts that stipulates that players must be publicly positive on all occasions and must express this verbally to the media at every opportunity.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being positive, as long as it does not lead to overly overt optimism — know thy limits!

Ivan went on to say; Read more…

Megson Hopes to Woo Fans by Getting Nolan Back

Gary Megson seems to be thinking hard about how to become more popular with Bolton fans and his latest ploy is to openly praise former Trotter Kevin Nolan and attempt to bring him back to The Reebok Stadium. Megson is quoted as saying;

“I didn’t particularly want him to go in the first place.

We asked somebody to find out if Newcastle would be interested in loaning Kevin back. We haven’t had a response. We heard Newcastle needed to move one or two players about because they went down.”

So, no news as yet but would the reintroduction of Kevin Nolan be a good thing for Bolton? Probably not.
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Megson Admits Difficulty Due to Lack of Funds

It has been reported that Megson is on the lookout for a new striker and have all known for a long time that finances are tight at Bolton Wanderers, but it is fairly rare that Megson speaks up about the down side of being The BWFC’s manager.

“It is difficult and I accept the problems that the powers that be have here in terms of finance.

“I said the other day ‘whether we can afford to do it remains to be seen’ but it might be a case of whether we can afford not to do it. That’s the big question.

“We are in the Premier League and we have two forward lads — and one of them has been plying his trade on the right wing for years, which is Davo.

“Johan didn’t get enough goals last year and has got to start chipping in with more, and after that we have only got youngsters. We need another forward at this club if we can afford to do it.“

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