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Avram Grant, whose name is actually spelled Avraham Grant, was manager of Israel from 2002 to 2006 where he took the country to the brink of qualifying for the 2006 World Cup. Despite being undefeated in their qualifying (four wins and six draws), Grant lost out to France and Switzerland who qualified instead.

His record at Israel was played 33, won 14, drawn 13 and lost 6, which was a win percentage of 62. In comparison, Steve McClaren’s winning percentage for England is 50, while Jose Mourinho at Chelsea achieved a 68% record.

At club level, Grant managed several sides in Israel including Maccabi Haifa and Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Interestingly, while at Maccabi Haifa, Grant won Israeli championships with players who would later go on to become famous in the Premier League such as Yossi Benayoun and Yakubu. While at Haifa, Grant was known for his attacking style of play and tactical wisdom.

More details about Grant can be found here.

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Viewers to Fox Soccer Channel on Saturday were pleasantly shocked and surprised to see live coverage of Soccer Saturday, the weekly show from Sky Sports.

It was one of those rare Saturdays where Fox Soccer Channel had no Premier League matches on-air while Setanta Sports had the two matches from the day: Manchester United against Wigan, and Aston Villa versus West Ham United. Due to so many English teams playing in the UEFA Cup and Champions League, the majority of the matches are scheduled for Sunday, October 7.

So instead of reruns, Fox Soccer Channel showed Soccer Saturday live from SkySports so many of us had our chance to experience first hand how viewers in the UK follow live matches on TV. For a review of my first Soccer Saturday experience from this past February, go here.

On the minus side, the network only showed the first hour of the show from 10-11am, so viewers were unable to see the second half news and scorelines. Instead, Fox Soccer Channel showed the Premier League Preview Show, an excellent show no doubt, but one that could have been shown in a different timeslot.

If you watched the Soccer Saturday show on Fox, consider yourself fortunate. It’s going to be quite some time until we’ll have another Saturday with no football on Fox during the Premier League season.

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As you’re sitting at home watching Premier League, spare a thought for the punters who are paying significant amounts to watch their home team play. How much? Scroll through the prices below to see the top prices for each category of matches.

Category A matches are usually those versus the big four (although some clubs will expand that to include local derbies, etc). Category B is typically your lower-position teams. Click on the club’s name to find out the full details.

The only club where I was unable to find accurate information was Wigan Athletic, who — despite the fact that their club website proclaims they’re “the home of the best value football in the Premiership” — fail to conveniently list their prices for the season.

The prices indicated show the highest and lowest for each category. For example, the lowest price for a category A ticket at Arsenal is £46, while the highest is £94.

Arsenal: £94/£46 (A), £66/£32 (B)
Aston Villa: £35/£20 (A), £33/£19 (B), £31/£15 (W)
Birmingham City: £48/£35 (AA), £15/£15 (C)
Blackburn Rovers: £35/£25 (A), £20/£15 (B)
Bolton Wanderers: £39/£31 (A+), £36/£28 (A), £32/£24 (B), £29/£21 (C)
Chelsea: £53/£48 (Premier League), £36/£35 (Champions League), £25/£25 (FA Cup), £20/£20 (League Cup).
Derby County: £44/£33 (AA), £42/£31 (A&B), £40/£29 (C&D)
Everton: £34/£28 (versus Middlesbrough, 9/30/07)
Fulham: £50/£35 (A), £45/£30 (B), £38/£25 (C)
Liverpool: £36/£34 (A), £34/£32 (B)
Manchester City: £34/£28 (A), £30/£25 (B), £26/£21 (C)
Manchester United: £44/£12.50
Middlesbrough: £32/£24 (versus Chelsea, 10/20/07)
Newcastle United: £45/26 (A), £40/23 (B), £36/20 (C)
Portsmouth: £41/£34
Reading: £41/£39 (platinum), £38/£36 (gold), £34/£32 (silver)
Sunderland: £30/£25 (A), £25/£20 (B)
Tottenham Hotspur: £71/£39 (A), £52/£32 (B), £42/£27 (C)
West Ham United: £61/£43 (A), £49/£34 (B)
Wigan Athletic: ?/? (A), ?/? (B), £15/£15 (C)

Easiest ticket price structures to understand: Manchester United and Portsmouth (no categories, just one set price depending on the area of the ground where your seats are).

Fairest ticket pricing structure (fairest not cheapest): Chelsea for breaking down ticket prices for the different types of competitions: Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup and League Cup.

Most complicated ticket price structure: Bolton with four different price structures. Chelsea has four, too, but theirs is easier to understand. For Bolton, you’d have to cross-reference the fixtures to find out which ones are considered AA, A, B and C.

Most difficult club websites to find ticket prices:

• Birmingham (not available except on a match-by-match basis)

• Everton (you have to log into their e-ticketing service to find ticket prices for each match; even then, it’s not easy to find prices without having to click several times)
• Liverpool (very difficult to find; I found the information on their version of their website optimized for mobile phones)
• Middlesbrough (ticket price page lists season ticket prices only, and you have to log into their e-ticketing service to find ticket prices for each match; even then, it’s not easy to find prices without having to click several times)
• Wigan (another club guilty of using the e-ticketing service, which is absolutely awful)

Notes:

• Ticket prices are for adult non-members and doesn’t include corporate sections or sports bars prices (i.e. Newcastle).

• Prices are subject to change (as they often do) and are accurate as of September 26, 2007.

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During the 2006/2007 season, the average UK TV audience for a Premier League match was 1.18 million, according to the industry newsletter TV Sports Markets.

This compares with an average US TV audience of approximately 300,000 people watching a Premier League match on Fox Soccer Channel.

While there’s a significant gap between the two numbers, it isn’t inconceivable that the United States may surpass the UK in the number of viewers watching Premier League matches. Of course, the US population is far greater than the UK (300 million compared to 60 million). But the groundswell of interest in the US for the English Premier League is taking many, myself included, by surprise.

When the TV rights for the Premier League next become available for bidding — in a few years time — it’ll be interesting to see if ESPN becomes involved in the negotiations. Despite the success of Fox Soccer Channel, it would take an ESPN to bring the game to the masses and to push the TV audience figures to over the 1.18 million mark such as in the UK.

An ideal situation would be to have ESPN, Fox Soccer Channel and Setanta Sports sharing the broadcasts of the games, so ESPN could show live matches during low TV rating hours (early morning Saturday kickoffs, for example), while Fox and Setanta would continue to share the rest of the spoils. Impossible you say? I think not.

However, of most importance is the entertainment level on the pitch. As long as we can continue to see so many exciting matches throughout the season, the league will sell itself in America. Already this season, we’ve seen enthralling encounters between Fulham and Manchester City, Man United and Chelsea, Fulham and Spurs, Liverpool and Chelsea, Portsmouth v Bolton, Spurs against Arsenal, and many more.

Let’s just hope we don’t see the dark period of English football that we encountered last Autumn where the quality of football was dismal. This time around, I don’t see it happening. With Chelsea faltering, Liverpool sputtering and Arsenal flying, Man United has a fight to try to retain the Premier League trophy. And with the emergence of Man City and Aston Villa as new hopes of beating some of the top four teams (as they’ve proven already), right now everything is on target to make this one of the more interesting seasons in recent memory.

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