My club (Liverpool FC) were apparently the first to use it and now others appear to be springing up everywhere. Liverpool has more than 17,000 followers but it also has a number of copycat Twitter users here is one example: http://twitter.com/liverpool 

My ideal job would be to do social media for a football club but it got me thinking if I could ask my football club anything on Twitter what would I ask them? More to the point would they answer it?

To be honest, these new channels will be useful but only if they are used properly and the clubs engage appropriately with their fans. For instance: why don’t they offer something special/unique to their communities like free tickets for retweeting a #hashtag competition for example? I have started to follow both today so I will be watching these two very closely.

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However, that was twelve years ago and this is now. Today’s Metro is reporting that they plan to do it again with these two going at it again for $25 million each making it the highest paid fight of all time.

Are they serious? Take a look at a recent picture of Mike below – does he look like a refined athlete ready to go twelve rounds? This is purely ridiculous. 

This appears to be another PR stunt to generate interest in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix which would happen the day after.

There is no doubt that this ‘Freak Show’ would generate a lot of interest but only because its weird and frightening. In my opinion the authorities should step in and make sure this fight never happens. There are some things which should be forgotten and this fight is one of them.

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Joe Kinnear was a surprise choice to nearly everyone, including himself as far as I can tell. In this truly shocking interview he manages to swear a whopping 52 times and asks the journalists to ‘mind their own business’.

I know journalists can be harsh but is this really the best way to deal with them and does this show the kind of leadership a Premiership football club needs?

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It has been well documented that more and more owners of Premier League clubs are now coming from foreign countries and that is bringing its own set of problems.

Many of these new owners don’t understand the traditions of their clubs and fully grasp the importance of their culture to the fans – many simply live and breathe it everyday.

I seem to remember a certain Russian Billionaire starting the foreign ownership craze off.

Some of these owners are welcomed  with open arms like the new Manchester City Owners and some are not like Mr Hicks and Mr Gillett who have had so many public spats they have brought embarrassment on themselves and my beloved Liverpool FC.

The real question amongst all of this is what makes the new owners popular?

So here are my five top tips to becoming a popular football club owner:

1. Leave the manager to get on with managing the team and buying players – you don’t know best that’s what you pay him for
2. Back him when he needs players to better the team
3. Manage the clubs messages carefully. In-fighting doesn’t help and brings instability to the whole club
4. Engage with the fans but keep a low profile yourself – the best chairman stay in the background and don’t comment on every issue under the sun
5. Invest in the youth structure and local community schemes as this shows the local people you actually give a damn

The power of the fans shouldn’t be underestimated, you only have to look at Mike Ashley to see how powerful they can be and rightly so in my opinion. Toon fans are particularly passionate and they just want a board and manager to bring some genuine stability to their beloved club.

Living in the North East, I have many friends who love Newcastle and they just want to see a stable environment and a good brand of football. There have been murmurings in the media recently that the club will be hard to sell as the fans have pushed this chairman out but I think Newcastle is a great investment if someone has the right amount of money and dedication.

Football club owners have to remember that if they go for popularity, it almost always ends in tears. My advice stay in the background and back the manager but that is easier said than done!

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In response to this the Northern Echo, which covers most of the North East of England, thought it would help its local friend out by providing pictures and a review of the latest game.

Hartlepool FC then kindly decided to ban it as well. I don’t know about you but I think this is rather daft as there will be only one winner here and it’s not going to be the club’s chairman. Despite what you might think a football club always needs publicity to keep gate receipts high and it will need to tread a much better line than this. To be honest the only people that are really losing out here are the club’s fans.

Amusingly, the Northern Echo stuck a big two fingers up at the Chairman, after the last game, by getting a cartoon artist to draw a ‘Roy of the Rovers” style cartoon review which went down a storm and made local TV – good PR for the newspapers in question.

I think a club fan puts it best on his site: "Before you think about banning us, Ken, you can’t – this site is compiled by season ticket holders, you don’t know who we are, and we’ve paid for our tickets, so you can’t stop us from getting in.Mind you, if you continue to act like this, we might not want to go."

One thing is for sure – this is not the way to deal with your local media or your fans.

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Supporters can now download widgets relating to fixtures, Chelsea TV and player feeds. There is also a new forum where fans can discuss the latest rumours etc. All of the widgets are exportable to the popular social networking sites.

Now I applaud them for doing something social but this got me thinking about useful football widgets. 

Surely a useful one could be ‘The Fans’ Choice’ widget. This could enable the club’s fans to vote for the players for the next team. Your vote would count – you actually get a say in your own team. The more votes a player(s) receives the more chance he has got of being in the fans’ team. Just a thought.

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Fergie uses the same tactics every year – wind them all up and apply the pressure early. To be honest, most of the time it seems to work.

Unfortunately, I expect this season to be a two horse race with the other two clubs (from the top four) falling away in the first quarter of the season. I am a dedicated Liverpool fan but even I have to admit we are falling way short of Chelsea or Manchester Utd’s squads at the moment.

I have been wrong before but I just can’t see either Arsenal or Liverpool giving them a real go of it because we don’t have the depth of players. To win the league you have to be able to beat both these teams when you meet them and I simply can’t see either of us doing that.

However, my tip for a shock or two this season would be Portsmouth as they have an awesome strike partnership of Defoe and Crouch, which can surely only be good for England.

If Chelsea do somehow secure Kaka’s services can I see them beating Utd to the title? Possibly – a player of his speed and skill might just tip the balance their way. Do I think he is worth £78million? Nah.

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I have watched all the games so far and I am quite happy as I placed a £5 bet on Portugal to win the whole tournament last week (before it started).

I know they haven’t got a world class striker but I just think this year could be their year. They are superb technically and they hold the ball really well and most importantly they have some very exciting attacking prospects mainly out on their wings. If they can utilise the winker properly (Ronaldo) as a striker and use their other wide players (Quaresma, Simão, Nani and Deco) for the creativity like they did the other day then I think we may well see big Phil Scholari lift another major trophy.

The second team for me this year may well be Spain as their squad deserves to be winning something. I also like Holland -I bet you can probably tell I like the attack minded teams – so I won’t be going for the ageing Italy. With that in mind I think France might have had their best years prior to this tournament – Henry, Mackelele, Viera and Thurham may find it hard to keep up with the pace of the games towards the end of the tournament.

Although I am not a Man Utd fan, I will be praying that Ronaldo stops leaking things to the press and focuses on what he does best and scoring goals for his national side. If Portugal win I manage to scoop a whopping £40 (I won’t be retiring anytime soon) but it all helps.

One thing is for sure no game can be more tedious than Greece Vs Sweden. Greece were even being booed by their own fans when they passed the ball between themselves for 10 mins in their own half – the term paint drying sprung to mind.

I will watch tonight’s game against the CZECH Republic with interest.

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However, I think I might now have found the answer to watching my favourite sport whenever it’s on. Games from the Premiership, La Liga and the Italian league and even formula 1 and boxing – it’s all available by following some simple steps.

You can simply log onto a website and watch these games across the internet. The site seems to take the feeds from the many networks around the world.

Here is what you have to do to enjoy your favourite sport. 

1. Switch off your pop-up blocker on your internet browser and check you can see them first as this is crucial
2. Log onto the free football sharing website  – it looks a bit Mickey Mouse but it does work
3. Add it to your favourites
4. Read down the page – you will see all the latest games in time order. Pick the game you want to watch and choose the stream one option. Here you must follow the instructions on screen. I would recommend you save the program on your desktop as then you know exactly where it is. Once its downloaded run the program.
5. The program then asks if you want to log in anonymously and then you can get started and go back to the main home page.

N.B The games will only start after their allotted start time. So don’t worry if nothing appears until then.

I honestly can’t believe there are websites out there that can do this but there are, this is just one of many but they all seem to use similar software.

Here are some more:

1. http://www.live-internet-football.com/
2. http://www.footballstreaming.info/
3. http://www.free-football.tv/

The clubs and leagues seem to be missing a trick but until they shut them down, I think we will be seeing quite a few more footie fans sat at home with their feet up, watching their laptops, enjoying the game and sipping a few beers.

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None of us can actually decide if it’s CGI or not – I am guessing it is.

Check it out, as it’s very well put together, so you can appreciate the skill even if you aren’t a big football fan.

Enjoy.

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