Some interesting City places on the WebUpdated: March 10th, 2007
I’m in the process of updating the links page, so thought I’d pass on a few more City links I’ve found.
I was at the MySpace page of City shareholder Camilla Boler, whom I wrote about here and here. It got me wondering who else connected to City had a page there.
Now I can’t be certain the following pages are genuine, but here are the MySpace pages listed for City players:
Nedum Onuoha
Paul Dickov
Joey Barton
Ousmane Dabo
Sylvain Distin
Looking through supporters clubs sites also threw up some interesting things:
~ CheadleBlues has audio clips of John Wardle talking about the debt and stadium deal from last May.
~ Hazel Grove Blues has an excellent ‘guess the goals’ quiz at the bottom of its homepage.
~ And check out the guy in the mask at Failsworth Blues photo page. Funnier still is the look on Paul Power’s face in this pic
~ The Northenden Branch and Duckinfield Supporters Club also have a great selection of pics featuring former players. And the Reddish Blues site might have solved the question of why City fans fell out of love with Keegan. It seems he just couldn’t stop pointing at people.
Finally, a couple of new City sites to tell you about. You might have already seen it on Newsnow, but Bluesology is a new blog about City written by “an old fart and Man City season-ticket holder”. Another new site is Blue Army, created by City fan Jonny Dean. Jonny’s been helping out with a technical problem on this site, so it would be nice if someone said hello and kick-started his talkboard.
And very finally, Mancityfans is back online after suffering serious technical problems. I’ve always found it a very entertaining talkboard and wrote this story about it earlier in the season.
Making sense of Google
Last week I was looking through my Statcounter, which records visits to this site. One of its features allows me to see what search terms people have used to find the site. Sometimes it can be a good pointer on what features to write, while other searches contain phrases too libellous to repeat here.
And sometimes the search term leaves me plain bafffled as to the workings of Google’s billion dollar algorithm.
Last week someone from Georgia, Atlanta typed “worst city to be a man” into Google and this site came first out of 19,700,000 returns. Another search that put this site top of Google was “what nationality is morton gamst pedersen”. But type in “Manchester City football club” and the site is nowhere to be seen.
According to this explanation, Google uses the following equation to rank web pages:
PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + … + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))
I’m no expert in advanced mathematics, but maybe that equation still needs a little tweaking.
~ In case anyone else is looking for answers to the above questions, Morten Pedersen is Norwegian. I really can’t say where the worst city to be as man is, but it may be in Malta, which has the highest per capita rate of male deaths by genital disorder in the world.
Lost in Translation
“It was not a question of money, it was a question of are we the proper custodians and I believe we are,” said new Liverpool co-owner George Gillett at yesterday’s press conference.
There’s something about that word “custodian” that sets my alarm bells ringing. You can take your pick as to which definition of the word he is referring to, but for me it always translated into: “I will run this club how I see fit, but recognise the importance of paying lip-service to the fans”.
I first heard it used in a football context by former Birmingham City chief exec Karen Brady, in an interview on TalkSport a few years back.
The Norwich City board then upped the ante in the insincerity stakes by not only describing themselves as mere “custodians”, but declaring “It’s not our Club; it’s yours” (link). To be fair though, Delia might have overdone the sherry trifle when the statement was drafted.
Not be be outdone, our own very humble chief executive, Alistair ‘Red Al’ Mackintoish, announced earlier this season that the City board, too, were mere “custodians of the Club, and football in general” (link)
Not doubt these humble custodians will be keen to hear the thoughts of the really important people - the fans - via the new MCFC Supporters Trust.
~ There were a couple of excellent articles about the Liverpool takeover in the Guardian’s sportsblog here and here, while the Telegraph’s Henry Winter offered his advice to the new owners.
Lost in Translation II
Whilst on Statcounter, I also noticed someone had translated this site into French via Google. You can see what it looks like to the French here.
But does ‘Meat Pie’ really translate to ‘Pate En Croute de Viande’?