First of all, I’m a Newcastle fan. Secondly, I’m going to comment on last week’s Sunderland protests against Bob Murray. If you can’t bear to see this sort of thing, please look away now. You still here? Right. Well, it seems that around 600-800 Sunderland fans (depending on which hastily cobbled together internet report you read) demonstrated after the home defeat to Wigan Athletic to demonstrate their unhappiness with Bob Murray. Bob Murray has already experienced the brunt of some direct anger this season, although I must admit I think the peaceful protest is the way to go about this sort of thing.

So what can happen? Well, not very much. As I understand it, Bob Murray owns pretty much all the shares in Sunderland, so unless he wants to sell, Sunderland fans are stuck with him. They’ve been well and truly Glazered. Of course, constant protests and generally making the chairman feel unwelcome are weapons of long standing in the armoury of a fan base against an unpopular regime. But why is this? Well, it’s pretty much because as I’ve said there’s nothing else they can do about it.

Except maybe buy the club.

Excuse me for saying so, it’s a bit out there but it’s something I’d love to happen at my beloved Newcastle United. Just imagine it at your own club: a shareholders trust owning a significant or majority shareholding in the club! Fans representation on the board! Clubs run for the benefit of the fans and for their own well-being, not for the benefit of a few shareholders. Free beer in all club bars! Well, maybe not. No more speculation over whether the new kid on the block is an asset-stripper or not. I’ve mooted this idea before in many alcohol-fuelled conversations, but is it just a pipe dream?

Well, it’s certainly a pipe dream to believe the fans of any major club could own it outright overnight. But it’s possible that a well set up and well organised supporters trust could raise money to buy shares, use any dividends to buy more shares and gradually increase the fan representation at that club.

Here’s some figures for Newcastle United. According to http://www.nufc-finances.org.uk, the club has around 129 million shares. According to the latest quoted share price, the price per share is around 46p. This values the club at around the ?60 million mark. Hmm. I certainly don’t have ?20 million lying around to buy a sizeable stake.

But maybe I could put in ?20. If 49,999 other fans could do the same, that’s ?1 million. Which equates to around 1.6% of the total shareholding. Not a great deal by any stretch of the imagination. But now let’s imagine we could put in ?20 every year for 10 years… and we’ve now got a 16% stake. That’s not enough to run the club, but it’s enough that the fans would have a say in how the club was run, and it may be enough for fan representation in the boardroom.

And there’s three significant figures: at a 10% share, you prevent anyone from reaching 90% and being able to compulsory purchase the rest. At a 25% share you prevent anyone from reaching 75% and being able to delist the company from the stock exchange Glazer-style. Of course, at a 30% share you need to be prepared to make a takeover bid yourself…

I’ve just used the figures for Newcastle United because they happen to be my club and I know where to look them up. The same principle would apply to any club with publicly available shares. And if the shares aren’t publicly available, maybe if the supporters trust could raise enough money they could start buying them privately…

So next time you’re feeling disgruntled with who’s running your club, why not try and do something about it? If the Sunderland fans were to get together and buy back their club I’d find myself in the rather odd position of continuing to wish the club the worst of luck whilst wishing the fans well.

It’s not an impossible dream. Big clubs are owned by their fans in Spain. Supporters trusts in the UK already own shares in many of our clubs. Heh. It wouldn’t be easy, though. But, if you want it enough, if you’re prepared to work hard enough, if you’re prepared to put a little of your money and a whole lot of your time where your mouth is, and you’re prepared to be patient, then maybe, just maybe, it could be you.

Europe’s top clubs have had a draft report leaked which contains details of plans to try and ensure that the 18 clubs which comprise G14 are ensured entry into the Champion’s League every season, effectively creating an artifical European Superleague.

While G14 general manager Thomas Kurth denies that the group plans to ring fence the Champion’s League in any way it is impossible to view their controversial plans as anything other than an attempt by the richest clubs to secure their own interests at the expense of traditional democratic qualification methods and cup structures.

UEFA have reacted angrily to the leaked report claiming that it would make football as predictable as professional wrestling but in this day and age of the same teams qualifying virtually every season for the Champion’s League and then reinforcing their position with the money they earn by qualifying, it has become somewhat of a closed shop anyway.

UEFA are obviously worried that the G14 will attempt to usurp some of their power and control over the game but by conceding ground to them since the inception of the Champion’s League and pandering to the wishes and financial greed of the richest clubs they have made a rod for their own back while at the same time managing to devalue virtually every cup and league competition in Europe.

The race for more and more money at the expense of the ideals of sporting play and the love of football have tarnished what should have been a golden age for European football but has instead turned into a grubby, murky world of money chasing and lessened values amongst clubs, players and fans.

Maybe a permanent European Superleague between the 18 members of G14 would take this high end, materilaistic value out of the game and while the rich compete to get richer in their own private league, they could let the rest of football try to reclaim the values and level of competition it once held before the money became the prize and not the trophy.

For a player already a little short on confidence after warming his club’s bench for a few games, it must be heartening to hear his national manager single him out as the only player under threat for his place in his country’s World Cup squad.

I’ve never believed that Sven Goran Eriksson was anything other than the football coach’s equivalent of the Emperor’s New Clothes and once again Sexy Svennis shows us all just how little he really knows about man-management and motivation, as if England’s often dire on-field performaces under him haven’t already shown us.

Sven picked Jermain Defoe out for the special kind of pick me up only a vote of no confidence can give and threatened Defoe with being left out of the World Cup squad because “if someone is injured or not playing many games and it stays that way, it doesn’t give me a chance to see whether they are in good shape or not.”

Jermain is obviously the only England squad regular suffering by sitting on the subs bench or from injury at the minute because if there had been others then surely Sven would have mentioned them. No mention of his golden boy Michael Owen who has been out with injury and will barely be match fit by the time the finals come around? Surely an oversight on Sven’s part. Maybe he’s forgotten the injury that sidelined his captain before the last World Cup when he insisted on still playing an obviously unfit David Beckham in Japan/South Korea and saw his World Cup dreams come crashing down around him.

Personally I can’t wait for Sven to be relieved of his job at the FA. His conniving, stealthy way of operating, his overreliance on his chosen group of Special Soldiers, his propensity to appear more in gossip columns than on the football pages and most of all his undeniable attempts to disrupt players at their clubs has grown wearisome and even an unlikely triumph in Germany this summer won’t make most football fans forget just how over-rated Eriksson has been.

Mark this date down in your calendars as it will be probably the first and last time that State of the Game has any praise for Sepp Blatter and his FIFA cronies but I want to stay as positive about this news as possible so here goes: FIFA have introduced some of the toughest measures since their inception in the worldwide fight against racism.

After outrage around Europe following high profile incidents such as the Spanish fans monkey chants at England’s black players and Samuel Eto’o’s recent problems with the racist chanting from Real Zaragoza fans, FIFA have decided to get tough and bring in disciplinary sanctions which will finally put real pressure on clubs to root out the sections of their support that are carrying out this disgusting crime.

With punishments ranging from match suspensions to points deductions (three points for a first offence, six points for a second offence and best of all, RELEGATION for a third offence), clubs are really going to have to make the stamping out of racism a number one priority with FIFA no longer willing to turn a blind eye to a problem that seems to have been on the rise again over the last few years in European football.

Blatter is talking the talk and while threatening to suspend national associations frominternational football for two years for failing to uphold the new laws, he may finally be ready and willing to walk the walk as well. I can’t say that it’s before time either as the cowardly, moronic attitudes of racist fans and the lenient “punishments ” imposed on them and their clubs over the last couple of years, particularly in Spain, have made my blood boil. There is no room in football or society for racist behaviour and if FIFA are about to make their efforts as hardline as possible to eradicate this scourge of the game then State of the Game are fully behind them.

The east End of Glasgow will grind to a halt today as football fans, friends and family prepare to say a last farewell to Celtic legend Jimmy Johnstone who died on Monday after a long battle against motor neurone disease.

Strathclyde police are expecting thousands of fans to line the route as the cortege passes from the St John the Baptist Church in Uddingston to Celtic Park, with the statdium he graced so many times awash with football scarves, shirts and messages proclaiming the talent of one of Scottish football’s greatest ever players.

Johnstone won nine consecutive Scottish league titles with Celtic between 1965 and 1974 and was an integral member of Celtic’s Lisbon Lions team, who beat Inter Milan to become the first British winners of the European Cup in 1967.

He was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in November 2001 and became a fervent campaigner for research into the condition.

As a further mark of respect the St Patrick’s Day committee in New York has given permission to Celtic supporters to hold a minute’s silence in memory of Johnstone when they stop outside St Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue.

After being eliminated from this season’s Champion’s League, Liverpool are appealing to Blackburn Rovers to change the date of their Premiership clash which is scheduled for 15th April as it clashes with the annual Hillsborough Memorial service.

“We have already been in touch with the Premier League and Blackburn,” said Reds chief executive Rick Parry.

Parry told the Liverpool website: “This is an issue we were aware of right at the start of the season.

“That’s why we contacted the Hillsborough Families’ Support group last June and they said they accepted that, sadly, one day it might be an inevitability that we’d have to play on 15 April.

“Now we are out of Europe, there may be some scope to look once again but it’s not just our fixtures to consider, it’s Blackburn’s as well and this is their home fixture at the end of the day.”

Relatives of the families bereaved on that fateful day in 1989 have led the calls for the match date to be switched as the memorial service is traditionally attended by Liverpool players and officials.

As one of the most terrible days in English football history, the Hillsborough disaster still looms large over Liverpool Football Club and with the memories still so fresh for so many people there can’t be too many reasons for Blackburn Rovers not to agree to the switch. Ultimately that greatest of Liverpool heroes Bill Shankly got one thing wrong, football isn’t more important than life or death or the act of remembering those who paid for their loyalty to their club with their lives.

The ugly side of European football reared it’s head again in Rome as an “organised gang of Italian thugs” attacked two bars where Middlesbrough fans had been drinking yesterday as they prepared for their UEFA Cup match against Roma tonight.

3 English men were stabbed and 15 Middlesbrough fans in total needed hospital treatment for wounds inflicted in the brutal attacks. Italian riot police had to break up the violence with batons as the Italians launched knife attacks and threw lighted flares into crowded pubs full of families and Boro fans.

Five Italians have been arrested after the incident but I’ve heard very little calls from the usual suspects for Italy to be banned from the World Cup or their clubs to be withdrawn from all European competition as there would have been if it had been the other way around.

English fans are still seen as the hooligan pariahs of Europe and in light of incidents on the continent over the last ten years I can’t help but feel it’s become an undeserved stain on a group of fans who are, in the vast majority, more interested in the football than the fighting these days. The proactive measures of the English police in stopping known offenders travelling has had a big influence on the availability of travel for the more disruptive element of the English support and it’s a model some of the other countries could look at.

How many more English fans have to be badly hurt or killed in European cities like Rome, Amsterdam or Istanbul before UEFA take action against the countries involved? I rather think it could be a long time before we see any movement in that direction whatsoever when it’s the whipping boys of Europe on the receiving end of the treatment.

If it had been Boro “Ultras” careering through the Teeside streets tooled up with axes, knives, firecrackers, flares, sticks and firebombs attacking Roman families, Tony Blair would have been on the TV pontificating about shutting down English football altogether. Where is the denunciation from Italy and Mr Berlusconi or does he only speak out if an incident involves the red and black half of Milan?

What is it about Watford FC that attracts some of the richest men in the UK to put their cash into the club? First a couple of high profile spells as chairman by everyone’s favourite panto dame Elton John and now deputy chairman of the Conservative Party Lord Michael Ashcroft is to take his shareholding in the club up to around 42%.

The billionaire was the Tory Party’s Treasurer from 1998 to 2001, under William Hague’s leadership and is one of their major donors and as such will be no stranger to throwing money away on failed bids for success although he is inheriting a football ship in better shape than his political one with Watford sitting fourth in The Championship and pushing Leeds United and Sheffield United for the second automatic promotion spot behind Reading.

He has praised the current club leadership and although he makes a big point about mentioning the good business lines the club is ran on, it should always be remembered that, to paraphrase Sir Richard Branson, the best way to turn a billionaire into a millionaire is to buy over a football club.

Whether Watford can make a more sustained effort at staying in the Premiership if they do get promoted this time will depend largely on the money made available to manager Aidy Boothroyd and how far Lord Ashcroft reaches into his change pocket.

The FA have ignored referee Steve Bennett’s match report from Sunday’s Arsenal-Liverpool clash and decided not to impose any further punishment on Xabi Alonso for his furious reaction being sent off in the game at Highbury.

Alonso had been given a second yellow card after appearing to slip and crash into Mathieu Flamini by accident, an incident which Bennett had his back turned to but still felt Alonso should have been sent off for.

The player initially refused to leave the field of play such was his incredulation state of incredulity at being dismissed for slipping and Bennett included this in his report of the match for the FA. They have decided not to take any more action against Alonso, seemingly coming out in sympathy of his situation, which referee Bennett still refuses to admit he got wrong.

This begs the question of when do the FA decide to censure referees for making blatantly incorrect decisions and despite having seen TV replays can we expect referees temselves to never back down from their decsions, however erroneous they may be. Either the FA have to take a stand and bring the match officials to task or we need a new code of conduct for referees whereby it doesn’t negatively impact them if they admit post-match that they got a decision wrong. Maybe they’d even get more respect from fans for such a stance. Maybe it’s time to open up that debate about video replays during matches for contentious decisions again.

Former Lyon coach Paul Le Guen has agreed a three year deal to take over as Rangers manager in the summer as a replacement for the departing Alex McLeish.

Securing the services of the highly rated Frenchman is quite a coup for Rangers chairman David Murray and with a warchest being presented to the club in the form of their new sponsorship deal announced this week with JJB Sports, there will be renewed optimism amongst the Ibrox faithful after a season that has seen more progress on the European battlefields than at home where Hearts are still holding them at bay for second place in the SPL.

Le Guen has said: “I am looking forward to the challenge at Rangers.

“I received a number of interesting offers from major clubs around Europe in the last year, but this move to Scotland was the right one for me and my family.

“Rangers has a proud history and tradition and I hope to bring further success to the club for the supporters.”

He’ll be hoping to quickly get back to winning ways with the blue side of Glasgow after winning three successive league titles with Lyon in France before leaving last summer and with his high profile appointment, coupled with the JJB Sports windfall, Gordon Strachan and Celtic may find Rangers a whole different proposition next season.