The Citizens invite you to watch paint dry. Literally…

The Spoiler is a big fan of Manchester City’s smart new official site, and we certainly appreciate their attempts to embrace the world of online interactivity. They regularly update their official Twitter feed, but we can’t help but think they’re not making the best use of the ‘twitpic‘ feature.

Instead of candid training ground snaps or behind-the scenes photos from foreign pre-season tours, we get an exclusive peak at the new coat of paint on the concourses at Eastlands. Exciting stuff, non?

… And here’s the club’s new open plan offices, which are startlingly similar to most other open plan offices. 

Fools and their money will not be parted thanks to new venture

When he isn’t playing as part of a defence that earned a relegation-worthy -29 goal difference last season, Andrew Taylor enjoys the finer things in life: fast cars, dazzling jewelery and high end audio systems.

Unfortunately, a penchant for premium quality products has left the 23-year-old and several of his football colleagues with slightly less of their humongous disposable incomes, thanks to the kind of shysters who try to exploit vulnerable young men whose bank balances far outweigh their connection with the real world. (A sportscar dealer, for example, will have no qualms slapping an extra £10,000 on a £200,000 if he believes the well-remunerated customer will be oblivious to the price hike.)

In order to help the UK’s 4,000 professional footballers avoid getting ripped off in this manner, Taylor is about to launch an invitation-only website called Platinum Players. The site will list companies that offer “luxury lifestyle products” (cars, gadgets, hotels, underwater dog treadmills) and also financial advisers and lawyers who are deemed “trustworthy”.

Nouveau riche club ink deal with the folks behind Big Brother

Since becoming executive chairman of Manchester City last year, Garry Cook was been extolling his vision of a sky blue utopia to anyone who would listen. If his global domination plans come to pass, we will all enjoy tasty blue food at Manchester City themed restaurants, which we will drive to in Manchester City cars listening to Manchester City Band (the re-branded name for Oasis).

The Citizens have started taking baby steps towards embedding themselves into our lives by focusing their energies on the media. Today, the club relaunch their official website in English and Arabic (at the time of writing, it’s down thanks to a bug), and tomorrow, they will seal a deal with Endemol, the Dutch TV production behemoth that will help the club compete commercially on a global basis with the likes of Real Madrid and Manchester Utd.

Endemol Sport’s Managing Director Gregg Oldfield has explained how his company will help put sky blue shirts on backs all over the world:

“Manchester City is one of the most exciting clubs in the Premier League today. They have great global ambition and potential, and we both share the same vision in building a modern, multi-media experience for City fans worldwide.The Middle East is very important for obvious reasons and we’ll also target Asia and Latin America.”

Endemol produce some fine programming in the UK, including but not limited to The Sex Education vs Pornography, Coleen’s Real Women and the highly lauded Snog, Marry Avoid.

Their flagship show is Big Brother, so don’t be surprised if City players are eventually forced to spend their summers trapped in a house with nothing but whirring cameras and Craig Bellamy’s foul temper for company…

Dummy match report arouses further suspicion

According to yesterday’s poll, 41 per cent of Spoiler readers agree with Jose Bosingwa, believing hopeless Norwegian referee Tom Henning Øvrebø was acting “under orders” to allow Barcelona safe passage to the Champions League Final. News that has emerged inthis morning’s Sun will do nothing to quell suspicions of a big ol’ stitch up.

Apparently, the official UEFA website posted a “dummy” match report hours before kick-off, which stated the game would end 1-1. It also correctly predicted that the Spaniards would earn a late equaliser, and that Didier Drogba, Michael Ballack and Alex would receive bookings.

The Spoiler puts this down to an incredible coincidence, but the type of folks who wear tinfoil hats to keep the government out of their brains will certainly have some more fuel for their crazy conspiracy fire…

Don’t go to Huish Park if you fancy a drink

Football fans in Somerset love nothing better than a good drink, but the Yeovil Town faithful have had to swill their cider in fairly unpleasant surroundings. Seb White - friend of The Spoiler and editor of Yeovil fanzine On To Victory and fan site Sloping Pitch - has got in touch to fill us in on the situation:

Yeovil Town supporters have complained long and hard for a bar for supporters to be able to drink in for years. Instead, we are given a tatty, mouldy, smelly Marquee which in short is embarrassing.

It’s a real sticking point with the fans - many have stopped going in recent years because of the deteriorating relationship between the board and the fans.

Finally, the club appear to have acknowledged the woeful boozing facilities via a message on the official website…

Spurs winger has high hopes for Blackburn this season

Perhaps it was the moving house, perhaps it’s because he’s back in London and can hang out with all his mates again, or perhaps - just like Tottenham - he can’t really be bothered. Whatever it is he should probably change the homepage to his website.

Like Voronin’s wardrobe, the tubby one’s website needs updating

Take a butchers at Ronaldinho’s official website, and you will be treated to the anachronistic beauty above. Ol’ Gaucho committed his future to AC Milan in mid-July, but obviously no one told the folks who control his web presence.

To be fair, the Olympic bronze medal winner hasn’t actually played a proper game for the Italians, but he has pulled a red and black shirt over his generous paunch on several occasions for the press. Either way, the sports brand with the swooshy logo who reportedly pressured the tricky midfielder to play in Beijing will be delighted that their logo still adorns his chest.

French fans desperate to bring their Drog back home

Last week, we told you how Marseille fans were clubbing together their pennies in an attempt to bring Didier Drogba back to the club. By Friday, they had managed to raise a paltry €5,000 (£4,000), but this website has really helped Les Marseillais dig deep over the weekend. At the time of writing, just under 20,000 fans from the south coast have raised €1,385,956 (£1,100,000), an average donation of around £50 per person, on the site whose slogan reads ‘All together, we can do it’.

This is a very impressive sum, but there are two problems: firstly, Drogba’s transfer fee is said to be around £24,000,000. Even if every one of Marseille’s regular 60,000 crowd gave £50, they would fall around £5,000,000 short.

Secondly, the Ivory Coast striker is eyeing up a move to one of the Italian big boys, and a move back to Marseille would be a rather large step backwards.